How Things Work – A Brief History of Reality
Book 1 – Dualism (The Scared & The Secular – Aquinas & Aristotle)
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Tuesday, December 21, 2021
“To make abstractions hold in reality is to destroy reality.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Preface
Welcome Everybody!
Whereas St. Augustine preferred the more philosophical approach to metaphysics utilized by Plato, Thomas Aquinas embraced the more empirical, scientific approach taken by Aristotle. Aquinas recognized God’s influence in both the sacred and the secular reality. The ability to understand and intuit these two seemingly opposite realities required two seemingly opposite forms of revelation: Natural and Divine.
“Natural Reason generates the logical connections providing the rational evidence of God’s existence in the secular world. ”
Human beings’ ability to recognize and utilize Natural Reason generates the logical connections providing the rational evidence of God’s existence in the secular world. The evidence is a rational reality. A rational God created a rational universe with rational minds capable of recognizing a rational existence. This kind of Natural Reason is available to all human beings and is what separates us from all other animals on earth.
“For the early Greek philosophers, such as Pythagoras, mathematics and geometry represented ‘the language of God…’”
For the early Greek philosophers, such as Pythagoras, mathematics and geometry represented “the language of God,” demonstrated through Natural Reason to explain a Rational Reality. This Natural Reason is our direct connection with God and the Divine. Human beings are rational beings because reason is necessary for recognizing and intuiting the rationality of God, as demonstrated through the rationality of the reality created by God. Mathematics reflects this kind of Natural Reason. The Natural Evidence for God is the rational universe.
“This ‘sacred’ understanding of God through the Holy Trinity was not achievable through intellectual or natural reasoning, it was only accessible through the mystery of Divine Revelation.”
However, Aristotle was born too early to appreciate Aquinas’ understanding of Divine Reason, because unlike Natural Reason, it required the mystery and revelation of Jesus Christ as revealed through the Holy Spirit. This “sacred” understanding of God through the Holy Trinity was not achievable through intellectual or natural reasoning, it was only accessible through the mystery of Divine Revelation. The mechanism for this Divine Revelation was Jesus Christ. However, over time, the Church came to promote itself as the mechanism of this Divine Revelation. This eventually led to the Catholic Church being the sole authority on Divine Revelation and its interpretation. Therefore, the Catholic Church became the Word of God. Institutional Christianity would replace the individual relationship with God as originally demonstrated in the Gospels and New Testament.
“Once obtaining power over Western civilization the Catholic Church became the sole arbiter over what was sacred and what was secular, and exactly what that meant.”
Although Aquinas saw no incongruity between Natural and Divine Reason, believing both to be critical aspects in understanding the nature of God and the Divine, his vision of sacred and secular unity would not survive the eventual corruption of the Institution itself. Once obtaining power over Western civilization the Catholic Church became the sole arbiter over what was sacred and what was secular, and exactly what that meant. For a time, it ruled both worlds. This had a significant effect in regard to the early scientific movement; eventually resulting in the ultimate separation of the secular and sacred into the two incompatible camps of science and religion.
Consideration #10: The Sacred and the Secular (Aquinas & Aristotle)
Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle
“The existence of a prime mover - nothing can move itself; there must be a first mover. The first mover is called God.”
– Thomas Aquinas
The rediscovery and revival of Aristotle’s original texts and teaching in the 13th century transformed religious and medieval thought. Thomas Aquinas was a devout follower of Aristotle’s science and philosophy, second only to his devotion to Christian revelation. Aquinas believed that while Aristotle certainly had access and understanding to the “Truth” about the nature of reality and existence, he lacked one important element necessary for complete awareness and comprehension: Jesus Christ. Aquinas would make it his life’s work to reconcile the divine insights of Aristotle with the evolving doctrine of the Christian church. Thomas Aquinas is considered one of the greatest philosophers and theologians representing the highest understanding of both natural reason and speculative theology. He was canonized and made a saint by the Catholic Church July 18, 1323.
“For Aquinas, this new science represented the balance between faith and reason.”
A disciple of Aristotle, it is not surprising that Aquinas saw theology, or what he considered the sacred doctrine, as a science. For Aquinas, this new science represented the balance between faith and reason. He believed that these distinct, but related, dichotomies served as the two primary tools for obtaining and understanding truth and knowledge pertaining to God. The ultimate goal for Aquinas was to use reason as the tool for understanding the truths about God's nature, while experiencing the truth of salvation through the revelation of faith in Jesus Christ. Faith and reason were not mutually exclusive, they were in fact mutually necessary. Like night and day.
“Aquinas believed that these two avenues of knowledge were not contradictory, but complementary: addressing two sides of the same truth.”
Aquinas believed that there were two forms of gaining knowledge related to the ultimate truth of God: Natural Revelation and Revealed Revelation. Natural Revelation involves knowledge and truth that is available to any human being through reason. Revealed Revelation can be known only through the divine revelation of God through Jesus Christ. Church teachings and scripture are also revealed in this fashion. However, Aquinas believed that these two avenues of knowledge were not contradictory, but complementary: addressing two sides of the same truth. Revealed knowledge does not cancel or negate the knowledge gained from reason, the essence of God is too comprehensive to be contained in a single science. Both are required to appreciate all aspects of divine truth. Divine knowledge is obtained through the light of revelation, whereas natural knowledge is revealed through the light of reason. Both reflected the light of God.
“Aristotle influenced virtually all aspects of Aquinas’ work and thought, and Thomas Aquinas influenced virtually all aspects of medieval philosophy and Catholic theology.”
Thomas Aquinas considered Aristotle’s Metaphysics to represent the science of being. Aristotle influenced virtually all aspects of Aquinas’ work and thought, and Thomas Aquinas influenced virtually all aspects of medieval philosophy and Catholic theology. Although Aquinas attempted to embrace Aristotle’s views of science and metaphysics by incorporating them into church doctrine and theology, some argue that it only widened the fracture between the sacred and the secular:
“Christians began to concede that yes, people can explain the world apart from God by observing the natural world. Yet they insisted that you couldn’t know God without revelation. So religion is important for your spiritual life, but everything else can be explained sufficiently through science. It’s an oversimplification, but essentially, the church decided that there were two types of things in this world (spiritual things and natural things) and there were two separate ways of knowing those two types of things (revelation/faith and science).
Ultimately, this box we have allowed ourselves to be placed in has grown smaller and more constricting.”
Mark Beuving – How Aristotle Messed Up the Church
Despite Thomas Aquinas’ assurance that natural and divine revelation and knowledge were not incompatible tools for discovering the sacred truth of God’s reality, the box of duality eventually became too small to contain both. Science and religion would become two completely contradictory and incompatible paths to discovering the nature of reality and existence. However, as science became more independent of its spiritual roots, it began to encounter metaphysical problems of its own related to dualism.
Postscript
Ironically, the Catholic Church would serve as both the source and the foil for the reason and logic that would eventually become the modern scientific movement. The very metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle that had become the foundation of “Christian” theology would also be responsible for the rise of “scientific logic” and “empirical observation” which threatened the traditional “Divine Understanding” and “Divine Proclamations” of the Church. Ancient Greek metaphysics, divine Church doctrine, and the Scientific Method would all collide in a search for certainty by perhaps the West’s most renown “modern” scientist and philosopher Rene Descartes.
Next week we will begin considering the impact of Rene Descartes on certainty, the scientific method, and the mind-body paradox.
Merry Christmas!
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