A Respond to Robert Funk’s 21 Theses (The Coming Radical Reformation)

By Joshua Woo

Introduction.

This presentation will look into 2 issues:

1)       Metaphysical God

2)       God-talk and its role in reality

My response to Funk’s theses1.1:

(1)     Metaphysics is not dead.

(2)     God is metaphysical.

(3)     Therefore, metaphysical God is not dead.

My response to Funk’s theses 1.2:

(1)     God-talk is essential in human quest for meaning and purpose in life.

(2)     By essential, it cannot be replace or absent from.

(3)     Therefore God-talk cannot be replace or absent in human quest for meaning and purpose in life.

Topics that are addressed here:

1)       Very brief and generic view of postmodern and modern understanding of Existence, Reality and Truth.

2)       Introduction to the God of Christianity.

3)       Compatibility of the God of Christianity with common truths (or general/ natural revelation).

4)       The role of God-talk or Theology in reality.

Very Brief and Generic View of postmodern and modern understanding of Existence, Reality and Truth.

Existence:

Since the time of Aristotle, Existence has been identified as a property or substance until the time of Immanuel Kant. When his Critic on Pure Reason was written, Existence has taken a new meaning, a modern one. It is now generally acknowledged that Existence is not a property or substance, it is an exemplification or instantiation. This is an ontological nature of Existence.  For eg. Whether Harry Potter exists or not does not depend on his property but the exemplification of himself. He can has the property of being a human but what really make him exists is an instant of himself in reality. 

Reality:

Eastern philosophy such as Buddhism perceived the reality of this physical world as an illusion while western thinkers talk about metaphysical realism and natural materialism. With Rene Descartes around, to say that Reality of this world is an illusion is absurd. ”Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am), which translated more accurately would be, “I am thinking, therefore I exist”, according to Descartes, it is ‘thinking’ (process of contemplating) that does certify our own existence, not sensational knowledge. Descartes backed his point by observing that even in our dreams, a non-reality, we can be deceived through our emotions. Therefore feelings are not dependable to certitude reality. For eg. We cry when we dreamt of the lost of our loved ones. This observation provided a groundbreaking philosophical method to justify our reality. He established that one’s existence is a reality that one cannot deny. Even in denying one’s existence; one has to exist in the first place. On the other hand, natural-materialism that proposed the physical world as the only whole that we have is too inadequate when, in reality, we have to deal with immaterial truths such as values, meaning and morality.

Reality is how things really are in contrast to appearances. It is differ from appearance. Appearances are in no way required for reality. Metaphysical realism presumes real objects that exist independently of our experience or our knowledge of them. They have properties and enter into relations independently of our understanding or concept or of the language with which we describe them. In another way of saying, metaphysical reality does not depend on our cognitive ability to exist. Even if we deny it, it still exists. Another characteristic of metaphysical reality is that we can have no knowledge of the real objects as they are in themselves. The only possibility for us to have any idea of metaphysical object is when that object presents itself to us, and we correspond back. Only through this correspondence we can have assured knowledge of the metaphysics.

The modern understanding of Reality can be found in Descartes’ work, “The certainty and truth of all knowledge depends uniquely on my awareness of the true God, to such an extent that I was incapable of perfect knowledge about anything else until I became aware of him”. He is saying that without first assuming the existence of God (the metaphysical object), we can not have any certainty of any truth (including our own reality). This applies even to mathematical truths. If truths are mere human convention without any reference to any metaphysical reality, then these truths are not warranted. If our understanding of 2+3=5 is the result of accidences occur in our brain, then this view can not be hold as a referential truth that able to provides warrant.

Postmodernist Jean Baudrillard, who is a willed agnostic in knowing anything about reality, sees our current world as the 3^rd order simulation of Reality. The 1^st-order simulation is the representation of the real (a novel, a painting, or a map). 2^nd order simulation is a copy of reality that is so good that it blurs the boundaries between reality and representation. 3^rd order simulation is a reality on its own without based upon any particular bit of the real world. And the 3^rd simulation produces what he called the Hyperreality. According to him, hyperreality can be understood as a copy that is more real than the real (something like the digital world in The Matrix, where the whole digital world is more real- hyperreal- than the real world). He argued that Disneyland has prompt us to imagine and believed that we are living in a real world, which in fact is just another product of hyperreality and of simulation. Another example that he gave is that prisons hide the fact that we are incarcerated in the society. We believed in our freedom because we see people being sent to prisons and by that alone; we lose sight of the structural similarities between the two social realms. As for monotheistic claim of the existent of God, Baudrillard suggested that “…ultimately there has never been any God, that only the simulacrum exists, indeed that God himself has only ever been his own simulacrum.” Which means there is no God after all; He is just an icon of simulation upon simulation that was created by us to convince ourselves that there is a metaphysical being which tell us about this world that we are in so that we know that there is a true reality out there to justify ours. According to this Simulation theory, we do not know which is the real anymore. I see this as the best of postmodern understanding of Reality. It is being presented agnostically and rationalized speculatively. Postmodernists are skeptical towards everything except their own skepticism. This trend of thought can be traced back all the way to Friedrich Nietzsche and David Hume.

Truth:

Truth is the quality of those propositions that accord with Reality; it is those that correspond with Reality. Truth is describing as it is. The objective of science is to discover the truthfulness of propositions, where by philosophy concerns in the nature of Truth: not ‘what is true?’ but ‘what is Truth?’ In the quest for Truth, we have to find out our understanding of Truth and its nature between absolute and relative: Can we know Truth? Is Truth absolute or relative?

In modernism, truth can be known empirically and rationally while postmodernism is agnostic in regard with this position. Truth can be either absolute or relative to the modernist, but to the postmodernist, Truth cannot be sure whether is it absolute or relative. The nature of Truth depends on the interpretation of individuals given their own values and meanings. Therefore postmodernists prefer probability rather than certainty towards everything other than this proposition. Postmodernism is very existential when handling these issues. 

Introduction to the God of Christianity.

The God of Christianity is the metaphysical reality that revealed Himself to us. This reality is personal; that He has the property of being a person (has intelligence, emotions and responsive ability). The natures of this God are: omnipotent (Job 42:2), omniscient (Psalm 139:2-4, Hebrews 4:13), all-wise (Romans 11:33), immutable (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17), omnipresent (Jeremiah 23:23-24), spiritual existence (John 4:24), His singularity (Deuteronomy 6:4), and eternal (Psalms 90:2). Some of His revealed attributes are His goodness (Matthew 19:17), righteousness (Psalm 11:7), truthfulness (John 7:28), faithfulness (Deuteronomy 7:9), gracefulness (Psalm 111:4), mercifulness (Exodus 34:6) and holiness (Isaiah 6:3). 

This God revealed to us that He created the cosmos (the whole spatial-temporal-material existence) out of nothing (Genesis 1:1-27) and sustains it by Himself (Colossians 1:17). He is sovereign over everything and He depends on no one for His existence and has every created things depend on Him for existence (Psalm 24:1, Ephesians 1:11). He had human to bears the special resemblance of Him among the rest of the creation (Genesis 1:26).  

God of Christianity and Common Truths (Compatibility between Divine Revelation and General Revelation).

We shall see the compatibility between the doctrine of God of Christianity with the common truths (general/ natural revelation). So far, we came to know that (1) we could not deny that Existence is a process of exemplification, (2) Reality consists of metaphysical object, and (3) Truth can be known. By placing God into these 3 different categories, we would get the idea that the existence of God cannot be exemplified (neither is His non-existence). The best we can do is by inferences. We investigate for the cause from the effect. Though there is no sight of God’s existence besides those recorded in the divine revelation, still the truth of His metaphysical reality can be inferred. But in so far our formal or informal valid arguments are still plausible than their negations; apparently there are good arguments for God’s existence.

One of them is known as the Kalam Cosmological argument that demonstrates the plausibility of the beginning of the whole universe at some point of time in the finite past. If there is a beginning of the universe, then there must be a cause for this beginning. And this cause has to be transcendental since the whole cosmos began with time and space together. A paradigm of cosmology is the Big Bang model. At the dawn of 20^th century, Einstein predicted the inconsistent mean mass density (either expanding or imploding) of the whole universe in his theory of general relativity. In 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies, at every direction, are receding from the earth. Later, discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) by Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow in 1965 inferred strongly that the universe has a beginning. If there is a beginning for the cosmos, there must be a cause.

Simply state, this argument may be simplified in 3 steps: (1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause; (2) The universe began to exist; (3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.

And since the spatio-temporal world is physical, the cause has to be transcending physics, has the will and ability to create, and incredibly powerful in creating the entire cosmos out of nothing.

Second argument for the existence of God is in the form of Teleology (design). Our biological and cognitive faculties are designed to function appropriately, in the way they ought to. Recent discovery of irreducible complexity has suggested that Darwin’s random selection and evolution theory is inadequate in explaining our biological complexity. Our DNA and its function are like computer programs that were programmed by intelligence. If we place a computer in the office with continual supply of electricity for millions of years, it will never give us Window XP. Besides that, it appears that our physical body not only has the ability to perform intelligently but also able to have beliefs. Alvin Plantinga pointed out that, according to naturalistic evolutionary theory, human beings, their parts and cognitive faculties, arose by a blind, mindless, purposeless process such that these things were selected for solely in virtue of survival value and reproductive advantage. This gives us no reason why we should trust our cognitive systems and the production of true beliefs such as Altruism. If our ultimate purpose is surviving why is there admiration be given to someone who sacrifice his life for others? Evolution does not give us warranted belief on truth, values and meaning. Just as the programmers of Window XP designed it to function appropriately as it ought to, we also have a Programmer who designed us to function properly. Our intelligence and value systems derived from our Designer.   

So far from these 2 arguments, we arrived at an uncaused, beginningless, transcendental, all-powerful, immaterial, all-wise, and a personal reality. This reality cannot be of Buddhism and Hinduism for they do not hold any belief in an almighty and self-sufficient god, if not polytheistic and pantheistic ones. As for distinguishing whether can this Reality be identify with the Christians God is depend wholly on the personhood of Jesus Christ who claimed that He is, in fact, this omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient deity. Such claims were common in the antiquity, but only Jesus Christ demonstrated it through His works of miracles and resurrection. 

This has resulted the birth of Christianity despite the fact that the early church suffered severe persecution from both the Roman Empire and the Jewish leaders. Up till today there are more than 1 billion Christians who still worship this ancient Man, compared to the other contemporaries who claimed deity for themselves such as the Roman emperors are now sealed in the history. We do not find any of their followers today. On the other hand, none of today’s ancient religion founders ever made such divine claim and vindicated Himself through prophecies, miracles and resurrection.  Neither Buddha nor Muhammad did; as well as Moses and the other ancient influential figures. It is only Jesus of Nazareth, alone, who claimed for Himself this kind of divine nature.

If Jesus is as true as He claimed to be the incarnation of the existing metaphysical Reality then we cannot ignore Him in our quest for Existence, Reality and Truth. Instead we have to correspondent with Him to achieve any knowledge of our own reality. Hence, the rest of the presentation presupposes the truth and theology of Christianity.

Christian Theology in Reality.

Theology:

God talk or theology simply means all propositions that infer and relate to God. It is a subject studying God and His relationship with the world and us.

Through the works of St. Augustine (5^th century) and of St. Thomas Aquinas (13^th century), we realized that Christian Theology had gone through some integrations with Greek philosophies, and later, in the Reformation and Enlightenment, with western Rationalism and Scholasticism. Some had critically categorized such integrated theology as a perversion. According to them, theology has lost its purity and innocence to Reason. But recent research on historiography of Protestant Theology has concluded a rather different view on these integrations. Historian Jeffrey Jue quoted Richard Muller, the foremost authority on post-Reformation theology, in one of his article:

The rationalization and intellectualization of theology into system characteristics of the orthodox or scholastic phase of Protestantism never set the standard of scriptural revelation and rational proof on an equal par and certainly never viewed either evidential demonstration or rational necessity as the grounds of faith. Quite the contrary, the Protestant orthodox disavow evidentialism and identify theological certainty as something quite distinct from mathematical and rational or philosophical certainty. They also argue quite pointedly that reason has an instrumental function within the bounds of faith and not a magisterial function. Reason never proves faith, but only elaborates faith towards understanding. [Italics mine]

Jue, further, clarified, “Scholasticism referred to a method for arranging and communicating theology, and not the content of one’s theology. Post-Reformation theologians were not abandoning the theology of the early Reformers in favor of a more rationalistic approach, but expanding, clarifying and codifying that theology.“ Thus the classical Christian Theology that we held today is very much valid and trustworthy to its biblical truthfulness.

Theology and us:

Can we exclude God-talk in our quest for universal meaning and life purpose?

Unfortunately it appears that there are, in fact, some who claim that both purpose and meaning of life should be discuss in isolation from theology or God-talk. But this cannot be done. Recent studies and re-evaluations on education systems, scientific findings, historical discoveries, bioethical issues, and economic stability involved the engagement of absolute truth, if not theology. But unfortunately, today’s trend is that most secularists try to engage into these areas with absolutes while denying its origin. It is like wanting to have a tree in the garden without its root. If that is the case, the tree will soon die out. We cannot promote unsubstantiated claims. It is as dangerous and irresponsible on our part in trying to give an unsubstantiated testimony in the court. The only testimony that is to be presented in any courtroom around the world is this: the Truth and nothing but the Truth.

The reality of Truth is never the main subject of philosophy but of theology. Paraphrasing French existentialist Jean-Paul Satre: “…to have any conception of absolute truth you have to has some point of reference that’s infinite. In other words, it would be foolish to ground the claim for absolute truth on any of us whose lives are very finite, very relative and very limited.”

The possibility to have certainty is only possible, given the divine revelation. If we are to come to know whether a claim is true or not, is when we weight our cognitive faculty onto revelation. Therefore, it infers that should there be any absolute truth at all, there has to be a starting point- a point where we were revealed to the Truth by the Truth. Only Truth able to reveals Truth. Falsehood cannot bear witness to Truth. Truth is reveal by a true God. Hence, without God, there is not any Truth for us to seek. Thus, there would not be any meaning and purpose worth our while. Therefore, to have meaning and purpose, we got to have Truth; and to have Truth, there got to be God; and to know anything about God, there has to be a study about Him. And to study about Him, we have to go into theology and God-talk. And since we are informed, first, through revelation and, then, good reason that we have a Creator, then we ought to build our lives base on the purpose that He has for us.

Recently, I attended a talk titled “Why study Theology?” at a local seminary in Singapore. The speaker started the talk by asking, “Why not?”Then he showed us a power point slide that states “It would seem odd, don’t you think, if [our seminary] offers no courses in theology or perhaps gives only token recognition by hang only one required course in theology.”

To me, that statement did not answer the question ‘Why study theology?’ It has not convinced me of the importance of the subject. Hanging the question in the air, the speaker carried on his presentation by introducing the different genre of courses offered by the seminary before extending into theological role of apologetics and its variegated domain. He then, concluded that studying theology is to study the faith that we hold so that we will not be sway away from orthodoxy. But I think theological study has more significance than that. This discipline is one that no philanthropy can be done without. I believed that theology surpasses any humanity sciences and constructive philosophies. It is fundamental in every discipline. The role of theology is obvious in every study. It is a necessary subject to every thinking person. Even atheist practices theology! Just that, their theology is bad. The same goes to every faith-believers, including ‘free-thinkers’. At a certain level of thoughts, people will struggle with theology- whether one is good or bad in it is another matter, but the point is everyone does theology whether we like it or not. Most often those who do it reluctantly will end up as atheist if not agnostic, while the better ones conclude with pantheism, deism and so forth. In this way, theological struggle is part of life and it determines one’s worldview.

Today’s discussion on jurisprudence, philanthropy, and socio-economic developed on a certain value systems of one’s worldview. The effectiveness and feasibility of each subject hangs their vitality in theology because, it is from theology, that values can be derived rationally. For eg. Whether certain economic ideology such as Socialism can be carried out or not depend on how good the theology (and its value system) that underlined the idea. As we know, Socialism presupposes atheism, an inadequate theological view, and with such bad theology, Socialism is doom to failure. Other economic system, which promotes better theological stand on issues such as self-interests, property ownership, stewardship and the appropriate role of government in distribution and jurisprudence, is more feasible and preferable.

Reference:

Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Routledge, 2000)

Jeffrey Jue, What’s Emerging in the Church?, http://www.reformation21.org/Front_Desk/September_2005_Feature_/82/

John Cottingham, Cambridge Companion to Descartes, (Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Joseph Teng, Orchard Road Presbyterian Church Baptism & Membership Transfer notes, (ORPC publication 2005).

J.P Moreland & William L. Craig, Philosophical Worldview for a Christian Worldview, (Intervarsity Press, 2003).

Lee Strobel, Case for a Creator, (Zondervan 2004)

Norman L. Geisler, Systematic Theology vol.1, (Bethany House, 2002).

Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, (Baker Book House, 1999).

Os Guinness, Time for Truth, http://www.veritas.org/3.0_media/talks/72

Richard J. Lane, Jean Baudrillard, (Routledge, 2000).

Robert Audi, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, (Cambridge University Press, 1995)

Sources on Sun Tzu’s sayings, http://www.quotedb.com/authors/sun-tzu

Soli Deo Gloria