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Metaphysics and the Idea of God
Metaphysics and the Idea of God
184 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1990
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March 1, 2018
This book is an attempt to defend the idea of God, from within the contemporary philosophical playing field. The author interacts primarily with the great German philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, but also with the early modern thinkers such as Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, and so on. His grasp of their thought is incredible. His critiquing and reworking of their positions is exceptional. However, his approach to Metaphysics and the question of God ends up being an attempt at providing a "metaphysical" foundation for contemporary Christianity with building materials borrowed from the Cartesian school of thought which can be traced through Kant to Hegel and Heidegger.
There are a number of very interesting insights, but it will be a very difficult read for someone who is not accustomed to the terms of modern and contemporary philosophy (especially German idealism and life philosophies).
There are a number of very interesting insights, but it will be a very difficult read for someone who is not accustomed to the terms of modern and contemporary philosophy (especially German idealism and life philosophies).
April 18, 2025
Highly recommended. A perspicacious and perspicuous explanation of abstract philosophical concepts. This book attempts to show how the God of philosophy relates to the God of theology. How does the Absolute, the Infinite, relate to the God we speak of in Christian theology?
It covers some abstract ideas, such as the Absolute, the Infinite (non-numeric), self-consciousness, subjectivity, the relation of parts to the whole, being, and time. It does this by tracing these ideas primarily through the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and of course, Plato and Aristotle. One would venture that this would be incomprehensible to the layman, and of course, I am in no position to evaluate the validity of the historical presentation, but the exposition is surprisingly clear. Not to say that it doesn’t require careful reading and focused attention— it does. But it rewards that with understanding and insight into the nature of truth and knowledge, the nature of the philosophy of God and its antecedents, and the nature of God himself and our relation to Him.
The first 5 chapters began as lectures— this may contribute to their clarity of thought. Part II includes some additional related essays. Each chapter unfolds new ideas in a remarkably clear manner. What follows are some rather idiosyncratic notes from each chapter.
1. Walks through the philosophies that announced the end of metaphysics. The logical positivist who claimed only empirical statements are meaningful. A self-undermining position. And the existentialism of Heidegger, which states we cannot go beyond our experience. He shows how God has been the primary subject of theology from the very beginning. The somewhat arbitrary substitution of Being for God that Heidegger espoused is not justifiable. He distinguishes three related areas: religion, theology, and philosophy. All with overlapping claims. Philosophy needs the One as the overall unity, the starting point, and the ending point. The finite needs to be grounded in the infinite. This One also relates to the Absolute, the highest principle. The question becomes, does this One, this Absolute, relate to the theistic Idea of God?
2. The Absolute Reality is a unity and one and must be one at its heart. Reason alone leads to delusion. If reason is set against self-sufficient reality as the absolute, that is itself a product of reason and thus a delusion. The Infinite is the counterpart to the finite. At the limit of the finite is the infinite. The finite exists only as it is ‘cut out’ of the infinite. A concept is defined by its border. What lies on the other side of the border defines a concept. The finite is bordered by other finiteness, but ultimately, the other of the finite is the infinite. In fact, the intuition of the infinite comes first. We can only conceive the finite parts because of the infinite ground. Infinite is one and indivisible. It cannot be divided as then it becomes parts. The infinite is not the mathematical infinite of a series of numbers, but the all-self-sufficient Absolute. This Absolute can be equated with the theistic God, but does not necessarily imply the personal God with a will, but is consistent with it. If one attempts a philosophy of God solely on the Absolute, it becomes theology as with Hegel’s Concept of the Spirit, which unwittingly took in Trinitarian ideas without recognizing the metaphorical elements. This ultimately failed as one cannot construct a complete idea of God on this basis. God is not explicit in the notion of the highest perfection, although he is identical with it.
3. Self-consciousness and subjectivity. The idea of grounding reality in the self-conscious began in earnest with Descartes and became the ground of Kant’s philosophy. The unity of experience is based on the unity of our self-consciousness. The unity of self is the ground for all knowledge. As developed through Hegel and Feuerbach and others, this led to the ultimate subjectivity of all knowledge. It undermines the unity of the empirical world, which is only brought into unity in the unified self, which imposes unity on experience. In part, this maneuver was to remove the theological foundations of the self. As we see historically and biologically, the self is formed from the social, cultural, and bodily experience. The unity of experience forms the self-conscious. This self-consciousness is based on the unity of the world. The unity of the world is based on its source and end in the Absolute. The Absolute provides the unity of reality of which the self-consciousness develops. Subjectivity, the idea of the self, is based on the Absolute.
4. Being and Time. Tracing primarily the idea of Time, which necessarily includes Being. Tracing from Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus to Heidegger and beyond to processes philosophy. Aristotle links time and motion. Plotinus sees time as a bridge from the past to the future. A duration that links memory to anticipation. He embedded this in the ‘world soul,’ that is, the link between eternity and temporality. In this idea is the concept that being can only be fully understood at the end. For example, a life can only be judged at the end of its existence as to what it accomplished and what it means. Similarly, this idea of anticipation can be applied to history, which can only be understood from the point of anticipation of the future.
Augustine follows Plotinus and elaborates on the idea of duration that is required to understand both language and music. They are experienced in a duration. He too sets the link between memory and anticipation as the key to understanding time and being.
Heidegger also placed meaning in the future, but given the locus of the self-conscious as the source of unity, as per Kant, rather than the reality itself, he places the meaning of a Dasein (being) as being read off the death of that being. The death demonstrates the finitude, which is the defining feature. This future orientation is key, but needs rather to be oriented to eternity rather than the finitude of the ego. Being and beings can only be understood at the end of time itself.
The connection of time and space is made explicit. Time can only exist in space. Temporally and simultaneity can only exist in a specific space. Events cannot occur in a sequence without a space.
5. Concept and Anticipation. Metaphysics of logical foundations in finite existence can no longer hold water. That doesn’t mean that philosophy can’t talk about the Absolute and the Infinite, but the only way to do so is through anticipation. All truth is historically located and unfolds historically. Only at the end of a thing is the truth of its essence known. For example, a flower is not fully experienced in its seed, but only in its final full flower, the essence of which was contained in the seed. Similarly, in natural sciences, hypotheses are proposed in anticipation of the experience of the truth. History also anticipates the end at which point the telos of history will be clear. Now we can postulate concepts that anticipate the final revelation. All these concepts pull the future into the present. A particular example of pulling the future into the present is the future resurrection that is anticipated by the historical resurrection of Jesus.
Part II
The Atomization in the Process philosophy of Whitehead. Is motion continuous, an ultimately indivisible entity, or is it a sequence of discrete events? Whitehead’s process philosophy postulates these discrete events as the ultimate ground of reality. They being not the subjects, but the self-determining ‘superjects’ that determine reality. The ultimate meaning of these processes is not to be found in the goal or telos, which makes these concepts unsuitable for a philosophy based on anticipation of the ends as the ground of meaning.
Part and Whole. Categories are essential for thought. The concepts of whole and part are related reflexively to one another. The whole is made up of parts, and parts are the parts of a whole. In the threefold division of knowledge into sciences (technical), praxis (communication), and religion (reflection), the concepts of whole and part function differently. In the natural sciences, the whole is not used much as everything is an undifferentiated part, i.e. space and time, and thus subject to mathematical description. In the human sciences (Geistwissenschaft), the whole plays a larger part as humans as individuals are whole but also part of a larger whole. There are different levels of analysis. In historical analysis, the whole can only be seen when the process or event is complete. For example, there can be no idea of the 30-year war until the event itself is completed— a whole. This applies in a larger way to the entirety of history, which can only be clearly understood from the end of history. Theology enters into the human sciences with the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth. In the religious sphere of reflective thought, the concept of whole cannot apply to the idea of God as he does not have a finite set of parts. Only in the sense of the unifying uniter of reality can God be seen as a whole in this philosophical sense.
Meaning. Meaning cannot originate in language as an assertion is true and takes on meaning if it corresponds to the actual state of affairs. Language is recognizing the meaning in reality. Humans are not the source of meaning. Meaning cannot be understood apart from the whole. How does the meaning of each event in life relate to the whole of life can only be determined at the end. All meaning is historically situated and culturally conditioned, but the conditioned historicity rests on the unconditioned whole of reality. This whole, the infinite, is the ultimate ground of meaning, and must be so. Meaning is not the same as truth, but meaning must be based on truth. Without truth, meaning dissolves into delusion. This access to the whole, the infinite, is provisional. This is the religious consciousness. The religious consciousness intuits the infinite and must function as the ground of meaning. When this religious consciousness fails, for whatever reason, to provide a secure meaning for life, it is abandoned.
It covers some abstract ideas, such as the Absolute, the Infinite (non-numeric), self-consciousness, subjectivity, the relation of parts to the whole, being, and time. It does this by tracing these ideas primarily through the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and of course, Plato and Aristotle. One would venture that this would be incomprehensible to the layman, and of course, I am in no position to evaluate the validity of the historical presentation, but the exposition is surprisingly clear. Not to say that it doesn’t require careful reading and focused attention— it does. But it rewards that with understanding and insight into the nature of truth and knowledge, the nature of the philosophy of God and its antecedents, and the nature of God himself and our relation to Him.
The first 5 chapters began as lectures— this may contribute to their clarity of thought. Part II includes some additional related essays. Each chapter unfolds new ideas in a remarkably clear manner. What follows are some rather idiosyncratic notes from each chapter.
1. Walks through the philosophies that announced the end of metaphysics. The logical positivist who claimed only empirical statements are meaningful. A self-undermining position. And the existentialism of Heidegger, which states we cannot go beyond our experience. He shows how God has been the primary subject of theology from the very beginning. The somewhat arbitrary substitution of Being for God that Heidegger espoused is not justifiable. He distinguishes three related areas: religion, theology, and philosophy. All with overlapping claims. Philosophy needs the One as the overall unity, the starting point, and the ending point. The finite needs to be grounded in the infinite. This One also relates to the Absolute, the highest principle. The question becomes, does this One, this Absolute, relate to the theistic Idea of God?
2. The Absolute Reality is a unity and one and must be one at its heart. Reason alone leads to delusion. If reason is set against self-sufficient reality as the absolute, that is itself a product of reason and thus a delusion. The Infinite is the counterpart to the finite. At the limit of the finite is the infinite. The finite exists only as it is ‘cut out’ of the infinite. A concept is defined by its border. What lies on the other side of the border defines a concept. The finite is bordered by other finiteness, but ultimately, the other of the finite is the infinite. In fact, the intuition of the infinite comes first. We can only conceive the finite parts because of the infinite ground. Infinite is one and indivisible. It cannot be divided as then it becomes parts. The infinite is not the mathematical infinite of a series of numbers, but the all-self-sufficient Absolute. This Absolute can be equated with the theistic God, but does not necessarily imply the personal God with a will, but is consistent with it. If one attempts a philosophy of God solely on the Absolute, it becomes theology as with Hegel’s Concept of the Spirit, which unwittingly took in Trinitarian ideas without recognizing the metaphorical elements. This ultimately failed as one cannot construct a complete idea of God on this basis. God is not explicit in the notion of the highest perfection, although he is identical with it.
3. Self-consciousness and subjectivity. The idea of grounding reality in the self-conscious began in earnest with Descartes and became the ground of Kant’s philosophy. The unity of experience is based on the unity of our self-consciousness. The unity of self is the ground for all knowledge. As developed through Hegel and Feuerbach and others, this led to the ultimate subjectivity of all knowledge. It undermines the unity of the empirical world, which is only brought into unity in the unified self, which imposes unity on experience. In part, this maneuver was to remove the theological foundations of the self. As we see historically and biologically, the self is formed from the social, cultural, and bodily experience. The unity of experience forms the self-conscious. This self-consciousness is based on the unity of the world. The unity of the world is based on its source and end in the Absolute. The Absolute provides the unity of reality of which the self-consciousness develops. Subjectivity, the idea of the self, is based on the Absolute.
4. Being and Time. Tracing primarily the idea of Time, which necessarily includes Being. Tracing from Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus to Heidegger and beyond to processes philosophy. Aristotle links time and motion. Plotinus sees time as a bridge from the past to the future. A duration that links memory to anticipation. He embedded this in the ‘world soul,’ that is, the link between eternity and temporality. In this idea is the concept that being can only be fully understood at the end. For example, a life can only be judged at the end of its existence as to what it accomplished and what it means. Similarly, this idea of anticipation can be applied to history, which can only be understood from the point of anticipation of the future.
Augustine follows Plotinus and elaborates on the idea of duration that is required to understand both language and music. They are experienced in a duration. He too sets the link between memory and anticipation as the key to understanding time and being.
Heidegger also placed meaning in the future, but given the locus of the self-conscious as the source of unity, as per Kant, rather than the reality itself, he places the meaning of a Dasein (being) as being read off the death of that being. The death demonstrates the finitude, which is the defining feature. This future orientation is key, but needs rather to be oriented to eternity rather than the finitude of the ego. Being and beings can only be understood at the end of time itself.
The connection of time and space is made explicit. Time can only exist in space. Temporally and simultaneity can only exist in a specific space. Events cannot occur in a sequence without a space.
5. Concept and Anticipation. Metaphysics of logical foundations in finite existence can no longer hold water. That doesn’t mean that philosophy can’t talk about the Absolute and the Infinite, but the only way to do so is through anticipation. All truth is historically located and unfolds historically. Only at the end of a thing is the truth of its essence known. For example, a flower is not fully experienced in its seed, but only in its final full flower, the essence of which was contained in the seed. Similarly, in natural sciences, hypotheses are proposed in anticipation of the experience of the truth. History also anticipates the end at which point the telos of history will be clear. Now we can postulate concepts that anticipate the final revelation. All these concepts pull the future into the present. A particular example of pulling the future into the present is the future resurrection that is anticipated by the historical resurrection of Jesus.
Part II
The Atomization in the Process philosophy of Whitehead. Is motion continuous, an ultimately indivisible entity, or is it a sequence of discrete events? Whitehead’s process philosophy postulates these discrete events as the ultimate ground of reality. They being not the subjects, but the self-determining ‘superjects’ that determine reality. The ultimate meaning of these processes is not to be found in the goal or telos, which makes these concepts unsuitable for a philosophy based on anticipation of the ends as the ground of meaning.
Part and Whole. Categories are essential for thought. The concepts of whole and part are related reflexively to one another. The whole is made up of parts, and parts are the parts of a whole. In the threefold division of knowledge into sciences (technical), praxis (communication), and religion (reflection), the concepts of whole and part function differently. In the natural sciences, the whole is not used much as everything is an undifferentiated part, i.e. space and time, and thus subject to mathematical description. In the human sciences (Geistwissenschaft), the whole plays a larger part as humans as individuals are whole but also part of a larger whole. There are different levels of analysis. In historical analysis, the whole can only be seen when the process or event is complete. For example, there can be no idea of the 30-year war until the event itself is completed— a whole. This applies in a larger way to the entirety of history, which can only be clearly understood from the end of history. Theology enters into the human sciences with the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth. In the religious sphere of reflective thought, the concept of whole cannot apply to the idea of God as he does not have a finite set of parts. Only in the sense of the unifying uniter of reality can God be seen as a whole in this philosophical sense.
Meaning. Meaning cannot originate in language as an assertion is true and takes on meaning if it corresponds to the actual state of affairs. Language is recognizing the meaning in reality. Humans are not the source of meaning. Meaning cannot be understood apart from the whole. How does the meaning of each event in life relate to the whole of life can only be determined at the end. All meaning is historically situated and culturally conditioned, but the conditioned historicity rests on the unconditioned whole of reality. This whole, the infinite, is the ultimate ground of meaning, and must be so. Meaning is not the same as truth, but meaning must be based on truth. Without truth, meaning dissolves into delusion. This access to the whole, the infinite, is provisional. This is the religious consciousness. The religious consciousness intuits the infinite and must function as the ground of meaning. When this religious consciousness fails, for whatever reason, to provide a secure meaning for life, it is abandoned.
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