This post is the third in a series on a recent book by James D. Gifford, Jr. titled The Hexagon of Heresy: A Historical and Theological Study of Definitional Divine Simplicity (Wipf & Stock, 2022).
In the first post I discussed the problem of the One and the Many and why the idea of absolute or definitional divine simplicity (DDS) is problematic. I also explained how the “Hexagon of heresy” arises in response to the One–Many dialectic spawned by DDS.
In the second post I applied the lessons of the first post to Christology. DDS, it turns out, makes it impossible to develop anything like an orthodox Christology because it sets Christ’s divinity and humanity in opposition to each other. This opposition can be (a) acquiesced to, resulting in the dichotomist-dualist Christological heresies of Ebionism, Arianism, and Nestorianism; (b) dialectically overcome with Christ’s divinity controlling and dominating his humanity, resulting in the monist Christological heresies of Docetism, Apollinarianism, and Monophysitism; or (c) avoided by rejecting DDS and related ideas in favor of Christological orthodoxy, which allows Christ’s divinity and humanity synergistically to harmonize.
In this post I apply the lessons of the first two posts to cosmology or how creation relates to God. The questions to consider, therefore, are whether creation is (a) fundamentally independent of God in dichotomist-dualist fashion, (b) ultimately wholly controlled by God in monist fashion, or (c) derivatively independent of God so that the two are not inherently opposed but rather able synergistically to unite in Christologically orthodox fashion. By “derivative” independence I mean that creation, while ultimately dependent on God as its creator, has a measure of gifted or delegated independence from God. Creation, in other words, is genuinely free. This freedom is limited, but it is neither an illusion (as the monists would have it) nor is it fundamental (as the dichotomist-dualists would have it).
From Christology to Cosmology
The ecumenical councils from 325 to 681 gradually dismantled the heretical Christological symptoms of DDS, but they did not explicitly address or reject DDS itself. So, despite the defeat of DDS with respect to Christology, that defeat remained merely implicit. This allowed DDS to continue influencing Christian theology in other areas, such as cosmology (how creation relates to God), providence (how God manages creation), soteriology (how God heals and saves a fallen creation), and theological method (how creatures can best arrive at knowledge of God). In particular, Augustine of Hippo (354–430), the single most influential Church father in the Latin West, made DDS a central assumption of his theology. He thereby effectively ensured (without quite realizing it) that the same heretical tendencies Origen’s affirmation of DDS injected into Christology would reemerge in other areas.
I’ll say more about Augustine shortly. For now, we should observe that in Scripture Christology is intimately connected to cosmology. As Gifford puts it, “the New Testament, specifically in the opening verses of John, Colossians, and Hebrews, places Christ (as God) at the center of creation” (p. 135). John 1:1–3, Colossians 1:15–17, and Hebrews 1:1–3a collectively teach that Christ, the divine Word or Logos, creates and sustains all (created) things and that all such things exist “in,” “through,” and “for” him. Furthermore, as the preeminent mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5), Christ is also the preeminent mediator between God and creation. For reasons having to do with both creation and the incarnation, therefore, Christology has direct implications for cosmology.
An Arian Christology, for example, implies that God either cannot or will not interact directly with creation, but only indirectly, through a created intermediary. Thus, Christ, the fullest revelation of God to humanity, is (on the Arian scheme) a mere creature, albeit the greatest possible creature. And if God never interacts directly with creation, then it follows that creation can never interact directly with God. Of course, if creation cannot interact directly with God, then not even the created Arian Christ can interact directly with God. The Arian Christ therefore needs a mediator between God and himself, a mediator that, on the Arian scheme, does not exist. In short, the cosmological implication of Arianism is that not only creation, but Christ himself, is cut off from direct access to God. Us creatures cannot experience God. The best we can do is make inferences about God from what we observe in creation. And forget about miraculous divine intervention into creation. If God can do that, then he can become incarnate. But Arianism denies the incarnation and so, by implication, it must also deny the miraculous. The net result is that Christological Arianism entails its cosmological counterpart, namely, deism.
Christian Cosmology through the 4th Century AD
Prior to the great Christological debates of the 4th–7th centuries, the early Christians viewed cosmology through the lens of Christ’s double role as creator and incarnate mediator.
Justin Martyr (c. 100–c. 165) associated the Word (Logos) of John 1:1 with the Stoic notion of the logoi spermatikoi, the rational seeds “implanted by God in all humans” in virtue being created in God’s image. By virtue of these logoi, human reason is a finite participation in the divine Logos expressed throughout creation and preeminently in Christ (Gifford, p. 135).
Irenaeus (c. 130–c. 202) was the first prominent Christian to clearly affirm creation ex nihilo in contrast to Greek philosophical ideas of necessary emanation and eternally preexistent matter (Gifford, p. 136). For God to create ex nihilo is for God to create freely and by Himself alone, without external assistance or constraints.
During the first two centuries there was nothing especially problematic about Christian cosmology. Early thinkers “articulated the received tradition well,” but their use of “pagan thought structures” and terminology harbored latent dangers that came to fruition in the third century work of Origin of Alexandria (184–253). Because he accepted DDS, Origen was compelled to view creation as both eternal and necessary. He viewed the very coming-to-be of creation as a kind of metaphysical “fall,” a departure from God’s perfect rest, toward which all creation must eventually and inevitably return (Gifford, pp. 136–137).
Athanasius (c. 294–373) began the process of reversing Origen’s cosmological confusion by reasserting creation ex nihilo and the essence/energies distinction. Creation is God’s free act, not something that flows inexorably from God’s being or essence.
Finally, Basil of Caesarea (329–379) countered the Stoic idea that creation was a mere projection of God’s thoughts (logoi), insisting that “creatures do not simply receive their form and diversity from God; they possess an energy, certainly also God-given, but authentically their own” (Gifford, p. 138, quoting Meyendorff). In this context Basil cited Genesis 1:24: “Let the earth bring forth …” to argue that creation was gifted its own energy. Creatures were made to do things, not merely imitate divine rest à la Origen.
Maximus the Confessor and the Logos/logoi distinction
A couple centuries later, Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662) drew together the various strands of the earlier Church fathers into a cosmological synthesis that eventually became normative for Eastern Christianity. His central idea is the Logos/logoi distinction. It’s not easy to piece together exactly what he means because he doesn’t lay it out in any one place. Drawing on primary and secondary literature, Gifford provides over twenty different descriptions of the logoi in Ch. 8 of his book. Here are a few of them:
- The logoi “represent the unlimited potentiality of divine freedom” (p. 139).
- The logoi are “preexistent” and are “identical with God’s purposes for this world” (p. 140).
- Creation is “a web with Christ at the center and everything connected to him via the logoi” (p. 141, n. 39).
- The logoi “occupy a ‘middle’ position between God and the created world” (p. 142).
- Creation is “‘in, by, and for’ Christ … because the logoi of creation are eternal divine energies inhering in him. In this way, creation, in its very rational principles [logoi], is neither a mere extension of God’s will nor is it autonomous. It exists really and distinctly from God, but is not separated from him” (p. 144).
As one can see from these quotes, the logoi do a lot of work in Maximus’s system. After reflecting at length on these descriptions and others, here’s my reconstruction of what I think Maximus has in mind:
- The logoi are divine ideas of things God could do. As things God could do, they fall into the category of divine energies.
- As infinite and omnipotent, God’s nature/essence contains infinitely many logoi of things that God could actualize.
- Because of the essence/energy distinction, God is free to act (be energetic) in ways that are not dictated by His essence.
- In creating, God freely chooses to actualize some of His ideas (logoi). In doing so, God energetically projects these ideas into extra-mental created reality.
- Through these logoi, God (a) defines the natures (physei) of created beings, (b) provides a purpose or telos for their existence, and (c) grounds the stability and intelligibility of creation.
- Since all logoi are rooted in the divine nature, the incarnation hypostatically (not just energetically) unites Logos and logoi in creation. As a result, all of creation exists “in, by, and for” Christ.
- The logoi directly connect God and creation by being concurrently both in God (as divine ideas) and in creation (as the immanent natures and teloi of created beings).
- The logoi don’t collapse creation into God because individual creatures are not reducible to their logoi just as the category of person (hypostasis) is not reducible to that of nature (physis).
- God energetically sustains and guides creation through the logoi while gifting a measure of energetic freedom to His creatures, inviting them to synergize with Him in pursuit of their respective teloi.
In sum, for Maximus, just as Christ the incarnate Logos is the bridge uniting divinity and humanity, the uncreated divine ideas or logoi are projected into creation and so are bridges that directly connect God and creation. They serve, if you will, as intentional conduits through which God structures and energetically sustains creation. Finally, because creatures are not reducible to their logoi, we aren’t mere characters in a divinely authored novel. Creation is not just a divine simulation.
Augustine Sows the Seeds of Cosmological Separation
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) affirmed DDS. As a result he couldn’t use the essence/energies distinction like Maximus to keep creation both connected to and distinct from God. To avoid Origen’s faulty “solution” of making creation eternal and necessary like God, Augustine had to separate God and creation. He did this by distinguishing the uncreated divine ideas (logoi) from created copies of those ideas, which he called (following the Stoics) “seminal reasons” (rationes seminales). As created entities, these rationes provide an internally hardwired program governing creation’s development. So, while creation depends on God for its being, it runs, effectively, on its own without need for Creator–creature synergy. The collapse of synergy leads to a sort of cosmological Nestorianism and is the first step toward the later development of deism (cosmological Arianism) and theistic determinism (cosmological Apollinarianism). That is, without the possibility for synergy, God either has to let creation run on its own (deism) or has to pre-program it to develop exactly as He wishes (theistic determinism).
Symptoms of Augustine’s confusion showed up first in his soteriology. By DDS, God = the Good and everything else stands in opposition to God just as the Many stands in opposition to the absolute One. Hence, everything distinct from God must in some way be not good. But if the very being of creation as distinct from God is not good, then whatever goodness creation has must be projected onto it from outside, as it were. And since goodness can’t be brought to creation synergistically, it must be monergistically imposed (cosmological Monoenergism). Thus, the goodness of creation (such as it is) can only consist in its alignment with God’s omnipotent will, its carrying out what God eternally and effectually predestines (cosmological Monothelitism). Election unto salvation thus becomes particular rather than corporate. That any of the “damnable mass” (massa damnata) of humanity are saved is ultimately due to nothing more than God’s good pleasure. And since Augustine believed that no one, not even babies, can be saved without baptism, the only way God can ensure anyone’s salvation is to meticulously control events leading to their baptism and continuing through their final perseverance. In short, if God’s going to save anyone, then He must monergistically determine the whole process.
In sum, while Augustine remained Christologically orthodox, in the cosmological and soteriological spheres his commitment to DDS pushed him simultaneously in two opposite directions. First, toward cosmological Nestorianism, the functional separation of creation from God by taking immanent universals or rationes to be created copies of the divine ideas (logoi). (Not coincidentally, according to Bean Branson, Augustine was the first Church father to deny that Old Testament theophanies were Christophanies. He thought they were created angelophanies and even denied “the possibility of any vision of God in the present life” [p. 70].) Second, toward cosmological Monophysitism, that is, toward meticulous providence and theistic determinism (at least with respect to those chosen for salvation).
Post-Augustinian Developments (4th through 12th centuries)
During Augustine’s life, his soteriological novelties provoked a reaction. Both Pelagius (c. 354–418) and John Cassian (c. 360–c. 435) objected to Augustine’s determinism and his views on original sin and human depravity. Post-Fall humanity, they insisted, is not by nature opposed to God and thus can will the good without any special grace on God’s part (though we do need God’s help to do the good that we will). A century after Augustine’s death, the 2nd Synod of Orange (529) sought to resolve the soteriological dispute by confusingly trying to “meet both sides in the middle, affirming Augustine’s teachings but rejecting their consequences” (Gifford, p. 162). This effectively ensured that Augustine’s cosmological and soteriological confusions would persist.
In the ninth century, as the West was emerging from the chaos of the barbarian invasions, the Carolingian Franks (800–887) embraced Augustine’s theology, including the filioque, partly to assert independence from the Byzantine East. After the Franks gained control of the Roman papacy, these commitments eventually led to the Great Schism (1054). In addition, Gottschalk of Orbais (c. 808–868) caused a stir by taking the implications of Augustine’s soteriology to their logical conclusions and affirming double predestination and thoroughgoing theistic determinism (cosmological Apollinarianism). John Scotus Eriugena (c. 800–877), unlike Gottschalk, rejected any fundamental opposition of God and creation and instead combined DDS with a neoplatonic, emanation model of creation to conclude that “God and the world were one” (Gifford, p. 164). The result was a kind of “Christian” pantheism in which creation is only virtually distinct from God.
A little later, in the eleventh century, Peter Damian (d. 1072) emphasized God’s direct, absolute power over creation (potentia absoluta) in contrast with the regular or ordinary power (potentia ordinata) by which God indirectly governs creation via created rationes seminales. As with Augustine, Damian leaves no room for Creator–creature synergy. Either creation runs on its own, following its divine programming (potentia ordinata), or God externally manipulates creation (potentia absoluta). Similarly, Adelard of Bath (c. 1080–c. 1050) and William of Conches (c. 1090–c. 1154) held that God’s only activity in creation, aside from creating in the first place, is to upset the natural order (Gifford, p. 165), which God only does rarely. We’re now well on the way to cosmological Arianism, i.e., deism.
Cosmology in Aquinas
In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) synthesized the received, Augustinian understanding of Christianity in the West with Aristotle’s recently rediscovered metaphysical and ethical writings. Following Aristotle, he argued that the non-eternity of creation is “not demonstrable in natural theology, but only in revealed theology” (Gifford, p. 168). In other words, as far as we can tell independently of divine revelation, Origen’s eternal creation could have been the case.
Unlike Maximus, for whom God and creation are reciprocally related through God’s uncreated energies (logoi) that do not overwhelm and thus can synergize with creaturely energies, for Aquinas (because of DDS) “any [real] relation between God and creation can only be created” (Gifford, p. 169, citing Loudovikos). Aquinas thereby cut creation off from God. We only have access to created grace, not to God Himself. Moreover, also because of DDS, “the relationship between God and creation is only real to the creature; it does not have reality in God” (Gifford, p. 169). The reality of creation, in other words, makes no difference to God. In this respect Aquinas cut God off from creation.
Having cut God and creation off from one another, Aquinas tried to repair the breach through his doctrine of the analogy of being, according to which all things participate in God’s being to varying degrees in accordance with their natures. But this doesn’t solve the problem. One can only stretch an analogy so far before it breaks and, in the Thomistic system, the analogical “rubber band” must stretch across an infinite gap. The problem, in brief, is that Aquinas tries to bridge the gap via nature—something that is impossible because on DDS the One and the Many are intrinsically opposed—rather than, as with Maximus, via energy (the logoi) and the person of Christ (the Logos).
Aquinas’s view of the complete dependence (contingence) of creation upon God, namely, that it couldn’t exist for a moment without God’s continual gift of being, also precludes any genuine contingency in creation. Like a mere holographic projection, creation has no freedom to be other than what its source (God) projects into being.
Cosmology in the Later Middle Ages
John Duns Scotus (1265–1308), a Franciscan monk, wanted to recover contingency within creation and within God, especially God’s freedom to create or not to create. So, while still affirming DDS, he sought to find “wiggle room” within the system. To that end he made three key adjustments. First, he rejected Aquinas’s analogy of being for a univocity of being—God and creation are on the same ontological plane, though God is obviously more fundamental. In short, there’s no infinite analogical gap to cross. Second, he introduced logical moments into God’s creative decision-making to account for God’s creative freedom. Third, he proposed the notion of a formal distinction as intermediate between a real distinction and a merely nominal or verbal distinction. So, even if God isn’t “really related” to creation, creation can still make a “formal” difference to God.
Unfortunately, while these adjustments are well-motivated, they don’t go nearly far enough. The root of the problem is DDS. Merely logical moments (as opposed to chronological moments) aren’t enough to accommodate genuine contingency in God and, without a real essence–energy distinction to back it up, Scotus’s formal distinctions collapse into merely nominal distinctions under pressure from the metaphysical “equals sign” that is DDS.
William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), another Franciscan monk, went further than Scotus toward affirming the integrity of creation and the freedom of God by virtually separating the two altogether. Again, while still affirming DDS, Ockham emphasized God’s absolute power (potentia absoluta) to the extent that God remains radically free to do absolutely anything at any time, including things that seem absurd to us (e.g., making 2+2=7). As a nominalist, he also denied the existence of any created rationes seminales, thereby eliminating the “middle man” between God and creation (Gifford, p. 172). After all, if God is radically free and not really related to creation (Aquinas), then why posit created universals that don’t really govern creation (since God can override them at any time) but are merely descriptive of how things have usually behaved (Gifford, p. 172)?
Ockham’s nominalism would pave the way for later humanism and existentialism (we create our own meaning in the world), naturalism (humans are accidental by-products of purposeless material causes), and the Reformation (in its most radical forms, a rejection of Church authority and tradition; every man is his own “pope”).
The Reformation
Ecclesiologically, Augustine’s DDS-inspired Creator–creation split drove the medieval Roman Church to assume the role of mediator between God and creation, with the papal magisterium assuming unilateral authority (ecclesiological Monoenergism) to dispense created divine grace in a mechanical ex opere operato fashion (sacramental Nestorianism).
Broadly speaking, the Protestant Reformers, under the influence of Ockhamistic nominalism, saw no need for the institutional Church to play a mediating role since God, by his absolute sovereign power (potentia absoluta), could dispense grace directly however and whenever He saw fit. While Augustine only affirmed single predestination (i.e., God actively steers the lives of the elect toward salvation but remains merely passive toward the non-elect), DDS—which the Reformers followed Augustine and the Roman Church in affirming—rules out any real distinction between what God actively wills and passively permits. Hence, it was only a small step from Augustinian single predestination to double predestination, the idea that God actively and unilaterally decides the ultimate fate of every creature.
All of the magisterial Reformers, Martin Luther (1483–1546), Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531), and John Calvin (1509–1564), held to double predestination, meticulous providence, and universal theistic determinism.
As a nominalist, Luther rejected mediation through the rationes seminales and/or logoi. Thus, the only way left for God to govern creation was deterministically to cause things to happen. As a Christian, however, Luther continued to take creation seriously, on account of (a) the incarnation—Luther was committed to Jesus as God in the flesh and as the chief revelation of God to man—and (b) the reality of evil. (Without evil, there’s no clear need for Christ as savior.) Because of DDS, though, and because “everything occurs of necessity due to the will of God” (Gifford, p. 185), it follows that evil is grounded in the will God. To make sense of this, Luther posited a split between God as revealed in Christ and the deus absconditus (the hidden God), who ordains all events, including evil ones. “God in Christ truly weeps over Jerusalem, but at the same time, God (the hidden one) ordains the apostasy of the Jews and the destruction of their city” (Gifford, p. 187). In short, “Lutheranism took the contradictions posed by divine determinism seriously … and moved the contradiction back into God himself” (Gifford, p. 187). Gifford notes (p. 187, n. 25) that this split in God means that we can’t fully trust God’s revelation, whether in Christ or in the Bible, because for all we know the hidden God behind the scenes has ordained it to contain falsehoods for reasons inscrutable to us. It’s no accident, therefore, that liberal theology started in Germany with the Lutherans.
Lutherans and Calvinists responded to the apparent contradiction of a good God decreeing evil in contrasting ways. “Lutherans, … to uphold the validity of created history[,] put the contradiction in God. [Calvinists], to uphold the unity of God, deny that history produces any contradictory events” (Gifford, p. 189). In other words, while Luther accepted the tension as real and moved it into God, inadvertently undermining DDS in the process, Calvin denied that the tension was real and insisted that it was merely apparent—what seems evil to us isn’t really evil from God’s transcendent perspective. Historically, the former approach led to liberal theology and to cosmological Arianism/Ebionism (i.e., deism and atheism), whereas the latter led to fundamentalism and to cosmological Apollinarianism/Docetism (i.e., theistic determinism and occasionalism/pantheism).
Calvinism also taught the novel doctrine of limited atonement (i.e., that Christ only atones for the elect). Given the falsity of universalism, the all-determining divine decree entails double predestination and soteriological monergism. Moreover, because of the Reformers’ nominalism, the incarnation—the Son’s taking on human nature—could not be salvific per se, as the Church Fathers had taught (cf. Gregory Nazianzus, “what is not assumed is not healed”). After all, if there are no universal natures (as per nominalism), then Christ can’t take on human nature as such. He can only take on a human nature, one distinct from ours. So, Christ’s death “is reduced to a transaction between the Father and the Son” (Gifford, p. 193), a transaction that cannot unite us with God but can only cover our guilt and assuage God’s anger, and that only for the elect. Calvinism thus emphasizes the office of Christ as sacrificial mediator—this is in the category of energy or what Christ does—over against the person of the Son hypostatically united with creation. Christ is therefore not a cosmological mediator (à la Maximus) but a merely soteriological mediator.
Cosmological Docetism: Jonathan Edwards
Unlike in Christology where the development and defense of orthodoxy moved from major errors (Ebionism and Docetism) to more refined and subtle errors (Nestorianism and Monophysitism), in cosmology things moved in the other direction, from the relatively less serious errors of Augustine (cosmological Nestorianism and Monophysitism) to the full flowering of those errors during the Reformation and the Enlightenment periods (cosmological Ebionism, i.e., atheism, and cosmological Docetism, i.e., occasionalism/pantheism).
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is a prime example of Reformed thinking leading to cosmological Docetism. Edwards affirms DDS and the equivalent idea that God is pure act, i.e., without any unrealized potential. As pure act, God necessarily is whatever He is. Thus, not even God is free to do otherwise.
Cosmologically, Edwards affirmed a blend of “idealism, occasionalism, and continuous creationism” (Gifford, p. 198). Idealism holds that “ideas [and minds] are more real than material things” (Gifford, p. 198, emphasis added). Material things are merely projections of minds. Occasionalism says that God is the only causal agent. Creaturely activity is merely apparent. Continuous creation is the view that the being of creation is wholly dependent on God at every moment. That is, creation cannot subsist for any length of time unless God actively renews its constitutive gift of being. Thus, “at the end of the day, Edwards believes that the only real substance is God …. Creation … is just God’s tool for his own self-glorification, and he is determined by his own simple nature to create it that way” (Gifford, p. 201). The end result is a kind of pantheism in which nothing in creation matters at all. Evil in creation is ultimately unreal. It’s no surprise, then, that “Unitarianism came to dominate Edwards’s New England a half century after his death” (Gifford, p. 205). They just removed the vestigial trinitarian distinctions that Edwards (as a Christian) continued to affirm.
The Early Modern Era: Cosmological Arianism
As we’ve seen, Ockham’s extreme voluntarism and nominalism were outgrowths of Augustine’s DDS-entailed Creator–creation split. Left no way to synergize with creation, God’s only options were to either let creation play out according to its own internal programming (rationes seminales) or to take direct control over it. Given God’s potentia absoluta, however, the internal programming didn’t really matter, and so Ockham dispensed with it in favor of nominalism. Nominalism meant that creation has no internal structure or integrity. What apparent order it has is imposed by God more or less arbitrarily (as far as we can tell). Needless to say, this idea, along with other traumatic events like the Black Death, created a lot of conceptual angst in Western Europe, which led to three great movements:
- Humanism: prioritizes humanity over God and nature; we create our own meaning in the world.
- Reformation: prioritizes God over humanity and nature; rejection of Church authority and tradition in favor of God’s allegedly direct revelation (i.e., Scripture).
- Naturalism: prioritizes impersonal nature over God and humanity; humans are products of nature; God is at most only morally relevant.
The subsequent development of Western thought reflects the complex interplay of these movements, all of which were ultimately predicated on an implicit commitment to DDS. I’ll note some of the highlights.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626), an English philosopher and stateman, was a pragmatically oriented technocrat. His slogan was “knowledge is power,” and he advocated an empiricist “inductive method” aimed at humanistic mastery over nature. Bacon also held that “nature and grace were two separate kingdoms” of God’s ordinary power (Gifford, p. 209) in contrast with the Reformers who viewed grace in terms of God’s absolute power. On Bacon’s view, therefore, miracles were inherently problematic.
René Descartes (1596–1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist writing in the wake of the Copernican revolution, the Protestant–Catholic religious wars, and nominalism-induced skepticism. Given nominalism there are no universals, immanent or otherwise, that we can grasp in perception. So, he wondered, how can we take our experience of the world reliably to reveal how the world actually is? His solution was to propose a rationalist “method of doubt” to reach an absolutely certain foundation. The isolated thinking self—cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”)—lies at the core of that foundation. Analyzing the cogito inference, Descartes derived a rationalist criterion of certain knowledge that he used to prove (a) God’s existence and (b) that God is not a deceiver. From this, he deduced that sense perception is broadly reliable. God, for Descartes, was little more than a theoretical posit needed to make natural science possible. His ultimate goal was to develop a “universal mathematics” covering medicine, mechanics, and morals. “For man to become god, he must utilize his will to become master of nature” (Gifford, p. 211, n. 14, quoting Gillespie)—this was Descartes’ humanistic replacement for theosis.
In contrast to Descartes, for whom the human self (res cogitans), in quasi-godlike fashion, is free and transcends the deterministic, mechanical material world (res extensa), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), an English philosopher and political theorist, denied the existence of any immaterial realm. All things, even God, are material and determined. God is thus brought down to our level. (Incidentally, if the material world is deterministic in its own right, as Descartes believed, then his godlike self can make no difference to it. His immaterial self is thus an impotent god. This is another prelude to deism, i.e., cosmological Arianism.)
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), a Dutch philosopher and secular Jew, was a rationalist whose “geometric method” supposedly demonstrated that everything had to be exactly as it was. He held “to the necessity of all that is” (Gifford, p. 223) and equated God with “Nature,” speaking of “deus sive natura” (God or Nature) as though the name doesn’t matter because it’s all the same thing. For Spinoza, “nothing transcendent can affect human decisions, because transcendence has been brought completely down to earth in the identification of God and creation” (Gifford, p. 224).
Isaac Newton (1642–1727), an English mathematician and physicist, “is perhaps the best example of those who desired to domesticate the nominalistic God by identifying him more and more (though not fully in Newton’s case) with creation” (Gifford, p. 218). For Newton, God does not transcend space and time; rather, spatial extension and temporal duration are essential aspects of God’s own being. The wholly mechanical and material creation exists within God and impersonal space, not Christ, mediates between God and creation. Not coincidentally, Newton denied the deity of Christ.
Finally, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), a noted German philosopher, tried to synthesize the skeptical empiricism of David Hume (1711–1776) with the deterministic rationalism of Christian Wolff (1679–1754) in order to explain how Newtonian mechanics could yield certain knowledge of the world. He proposed transcendental idealism, according to which the world as we know it is a mere projection or construct of the human rational mind imposing structure on the sense data of experience. This means that whatever cannot be presented to us via bare sense data—such as God, morals, or the self—is either (a) a human construct or (b) is completely unknowable. God and the human self, for Kant, are regulative ideas, mere theoretical posits that help us make sense of the possibility of morality and scientific knowledge while remaining intrinsically unknowable. Kant’s philosophy thus leads to a “non-supernatural religion that bears little or no relation to biblical Christianity and that becomes essentially a system of ethics” (Gifford, p. 228). This vision would eventually be pursued by liberal theologians like Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834).
One general feature of the early modern era is the search for an absolutely certain foundation, whether of pure reason (rationalism), brute experience (empiricism), some combination of the two (Kant), or divine revelation (the Reformers). To build properly on this foundation, one had to adopt the right method, whether inductive (Bacon), geometric (Spinoza), transcendental (Kant), exegetical (the Reformers), or what have you. The main weakness of sort of foundationalism is its rigidity, its “inability … to adapt to any sort of give-and-take” (Gifford, p. 216). The ironic result is dogmatic fundamentalism. Those who don’t arrive at the same conclusions “must” be at fault.
Early European Atheism: From Cosmological Arianism to Cosmological Ebionism
Gifford observes that “atheism, in its modern variety, … did not begin with the new science, ‘but with the disintegration of a common religious confession sustained by a teaching Church’” (p. 221).
Case in point, Leonard Lessius (1554–1623), a Jesuit philosopher and apologist, approached atheism as a purely philosophical issue, not a theological one. His case for God’s existence is entirely natural theology, arguing from creation to God. He uses the same kinds of arguments, mainly variations on the design argument, that the Stoics used against the atheistic Epicureans. His arguments from prophecy and miracles feature Jesus as a paradigmatic example, but not as uniquely revelatory of God. The result is that Jesus’s life becomes one fact among others that points us toward God without actually allowing us to see God (cf. John 14:9). Lessing’s whole apologetic, then, is fundamentally Arian.
Newton brought nature within God; Spinoza equated God and nature; Kant left God as a “we know not what” outside of nature. The trajectory of modern thought displays a progressive marginalization of God. God becomes increasingly irrelevant. Denis Diderot (1713–1784) turned Spinoza’s equation into an opposition: “Either God or nature.” Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) argued that God is just a human projection. We created God. Some modern atheists even invested nature with quasi-divine status, as Carl Sagan (1934–1996) did when he spoke of the “Cosmos” as “all that is or was or ever will be,” an imitation of the Biblical doxology describing God as the one “who was, and is, and is to come” (Rev. 1:8; 4:8).
Ironically, in trying to vindicate creation and humanity by excluding the monistic, all-controlling God, atheism strips all meaning and purpose out of creation. When the Many rises up against the One, the only way left to unify the Many is by some kind of external imposition, i.e., “might makes right.” To overcome atheism we need to replace the monistic God of DDS with the personal, free, living, and interactive God revealed in Christ.