What Is [Really] Real? (Biblical Worldview Course, Session 2)
Your mission: to lead your family in defending the Christian message. However, you have to be able to explain it before you can defend it. The Biblical Worldview Course is taking you through the seven biggest questions of life, and how the biblical worldview answers each one, and why its answers are superior to those of its competitors.
This is Session Two.
PART 1:
PART 2:
Introduction: Look Around You.
What do you see? A laptop, a desk, a phone. Your hands. Look outside. There's a tree, clouds, stars. So what is all that stuff? It might seem like an absurdly basic question. But really think about it: Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. So examine your experience.
Start with the tree. How do you explain what the tree "is?"
You might go small. It's made of cells. Those are made up of various constituent parts. Those are made up of proteins and molecules, which are composed of atoms. And atoms are protons, neutrons, and electrons, which are really just quarks. And if you go down small enough everything is supposedly strings (string theory) or Higgs Bosons. But what are those? And how does that make sense of the Maple tree in my backyard? This is "atomism"—thinking of things in terms of their discrete parts. There are no categories; everything is radically individuated. There are no ultimate answers about reality there.
Instead, you could go big. You could think in terms of categories. That tree in your backyard is given meaning by the fact that it is a tree—it's in the tree category. It has "tree-ness." But what are trees? They're woody plants. And plants are a type of life. And living things, those are things… but everything is a thing. So how does that make sense of the Maple tree? This is what John Frame calls "holism." If you take this to its logical conclusion, it denies the reality of distinctions and individuality. There are no answers there either.
So what is all this stuff?
What is really real? What explains reality and why things are the way they are? The study of real reality, prime reality, is metaphysics. And the question of prime reality has been a live one at least since Heraclitus said "All is fire" and Thales said "All is water."
There are other questions bound up with this question, too. These are what we'll look at in this episode.
How do we explain why there are necessary things (like laws of logic and morality) and contingent things (like matter and energy)?
How do we account for oneness and diversity? Oneness refers to laws, principles, categories. Diversity refers to individuals, entities, and facts.
And how do we explain why the world seems to have both mind and matter in it? Can matter give rise to mind (a kind of materialist explanation)? Is everything really mind (pan-psychism?)
As Christians, we aren't left to speculate. We have a key, found in the Bible.
Here's this lesson's big idea:
The key to understanding the cosmos is not to examine its parts in relation to itself, but to consider it all (sum and part) in relation to its Creator.
Biblical Metaphysics
It starts with Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Right here a distinction is made between Creator and Creation. This distinction is absolutely key to understanding reality.
This verse does more than give us our origin story. It presents the true perspective of the world.
The world is not merely particles, nor is everything one. There is real unity reflected in the reality around us, so it makes sense to speak in terms of categories and laws.
We don't have to speak of each individual tree, we can talk in terms of what "trees" are like. On the other hand, there is real distinction and diversity in reality, so individuality, uniqueness, and personhood are real and not merely illusions.
When we have described "Man" in general, we still have a long way to go before we understand an individual person. And you can't think you know your wife just because you know "what women are like!"
If we only try to understand reality in terms of itself, we will fail at understanding it at all.
If we only look at the parts, we won't understand the whole. If we only look at facts, we won't get to laws. If we only look at categories and oneness, we'll never comprehend individuality and unique entities.
Philosophical Problems Solved by the Biblical Worldview
There are so many philosophical problems that are solved when we start with the eternal power and divine nature of the God of the Bible as the foundation of our worldview. There are three ways in which the biblical worldview makes sense of metaphysics—explains prime reality, answers the question of "What is real?" And these three ways correspond to the three questions we asked earlier.
Contingent vs. Necessary existence:
Both necessary things like logic and contingent things like matter are explained by God.
His eternal power explains how all this matter got here, and his divine nature explains why the laws of logic govern all thought and experience.
Oneness vs. Diversity:
Neither unity (categories, laws) nor diversity (individual entities, facts) is more fundamental to reality. Rather they are equally ultimate, both being rooted in the Triune (read: "Three-One") divine nature of God.
Mind vs. Matter:
Reality is not pan-psychic, nor are consciousness and personhood mere illusions. Instead, both mind and matter are explained by the creative, eternal power of God, who made human persons in his image and created the material world as a theater for his glory.
See Romans 1:20:
"For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse."
The ancient Greek philosophers are therefore to be condemned for their failure to grasp even the rudimentary doctrines about God through General Revelation.
Scripture says God's eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen. So alternative worldviews that explain reality or metaphysics differently ultimately fail to perceive what should be clearly seen.
Non-biblical alternatives:
Materialism:
James N. Anderson says, "Everything that exists consists of nothing but matter and energy. Everything is governed by the basic laws of physics and, in principle, can be completely explained in terms of those physical laws. Every object is a purely physical object. Every event that occurs has a purely physical cause (if it has any cause at all). In short, the universe is just a collection of clumps of matter following the laws of physics" (Anderson, James N., What's Your Worldview, Wheaton: Crossway, 2014, p. 69).
Materialism denies the Creator-creation distinction. It cannot account for necessary laws or contingent matter, either (though they believe science will eventually be able to do so). Nor can it account for oneness (laws, categories) because everything is ultimately reducible to discrete, material parts. Further, materialism cannot account for mind, personhood or self (cf. Sam Harris, who denies the reality of self).
Monism/Holism
According to Monism, "...everything is ultimately one. Nothing that exists is really distinct from anything else that exists—which is just to say that, in the final analysis, only one thing exists. And that one thing—call it 'the universe,' 'reality,' 'the One,' or whatever you like—cannot be divided or decomposed into more fundamental parts or constituents" (Anderson, 71).
Monism denies the Creator-creation distinction. It cannot explain why there is contingent matter or plurality. And it denies personhood: "Atman is Brahman" is a core doctrine of Hinduism. The self is the over-spirit.
Unitarian Monotheism
Islam believes Allah is the creator of the world. and sustains it. "Judaism and Islam have a defective view of biblical Twoism ( Peter Jones famously divides all worldviews up into "one-ism" and "two-ism").
Their denial of the Trinity leaves them with a transcendent yet impersonal God (an attempt at Twoism), who ultimately depends upon his relationship with human beings in order to constitute his personhood (which ends up in Oneism by a circuitous route)" (Peter Jones, The Other Worldview, 199).
This view affirms a kind of creator-creation distinction. However, it would seem to struggle to explain necessary laws such as moral obligations. This is because a unitarian God would not have any interpersonal obligations to anyone prior to creating other morally significant beings (i.e. humanity). Further, the laws of Logic all exist necessarily, but there are three of them, and it's unclear how a necessarily-existent body of diverse laws could be grounded in a radically-one monad.
Unitarian monotheism can account for oneness, but not diversity/plurality. Plurality would not reflect anything in God's nature and would be radically alien to him. It's not even clear that such a God could create real diversity/plurality.
Unitarian monotheism affirm both mind and matter; as far as I know, unitarian monotheisms typically teach real personhood.
Conclusion:
Non-biblical worldviews try hard but fail to account for the way reality really is. This isn't because reality is hard to explain but because building upon a false foundation.
The key to understanding the cosmos is not to examine its parts in relation to itself, but to consider it all (sum and part) in relation to its Creator.
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