St Augustine's Correlation: God, Truth, Being itself

Botticelli's concept of St. Augustine

…St. Augustine’s view that God is being itself is based partly upon Platonism (“God is that which truly is” and partly on the Bible—“I am that I am”). The transcendence of time as a condition of full reality is a central theme…[in Augustine’s work].[1]

Of course Augustine was one of the seminal thinkers of all Church history. Along with Aquinas he’s probably one of the two most important theologians of all time. He might be called the last thinker in the tradition of the classical age. His view of the Trinity cemented the Orthodox position and set the Western view of Trinity on it’s trajectory diverging from the eastern Church. His work The City of God is one of the greatest theological master pieces of all time, and to think it’s a letter to friend (a letter the size of the New York Phone book).

Augustine expresses the concept of the super-essential Godhead many times and in many ways. Augustine was a Platonist. In that regard perhaps his greatest innovation was to place the Platonic forms in the mind of God. That is a major innovation because it trumps the Neo-Platonistic following after Plotinus, who conceived of a form of the forms. In Augustinian understanding the equivalent of the “the one” the form that holds all other forms within itself is the mind of God. Augustine never made an argument for the existence of God because for him God was known with certainty and immediacy. God is immediately discerned in the apprehension of truth, thus need not be “proved.” God is the basis of all truth, and therefore, cannot be the object of questioning about truth, since God is he medium through which other truths can be known.[2] Tillich said:

Augustine, after he had experienced all the implications of ancient skepticism, gave a classical answer to the problem of the two absolutes: they coincide in the nature of truth. Veritas is presupposed in ever philosophical argument; and veritas is God. You cannot deny truth as such because you could do it only in the name of truth, thus establishing truth. And if you establish truth you affirm God. “Where I have found the truth there I have found my God, the truth itself,” Augustine says. The question of the two Ultimates is solved in such a way that the religious Ultimate is presupposed in every philosophical question, including the question of God. God is the presupposition of the question of God. This is the ontological solution of the problem of the philosophy of religion. God can never be reached if he is the object of a question and not its basis.[3]

Augustine says God is truth. He doesn’t so much say God is being as he says God is truth. But to say this in this way is actually in line with the general theme we have been discussing, the one I call “super-essential Godhead,” or Tillich’s existential ontology. Augustine puts the emphasis upon God’s name as love, not being. Since he was a neo Platonist he thought of true reality as beyond being and thus he thought of God as “beyond being.”[4] This makes no sense in a modern setting since for us “to be” is reality, and to not be part of being would meaning being unreal. But in the platonic context, true reality was beyond this level of reality and what we think of as “our reality” or “our world” is only a plane reflection of the true reality. We are creatures of a refection in a mud puddle and the thing reflected that is totally removed from our being is the true reality. It was this distinction Tillich tried to preserve by distinguishing between being and existence.

Augustine looked to the same passage in Exodus that Gilson quotes in connection with Aquinas. Augustine’s conclusions are much the same about that phrase “I am that I am.” This is one of his key reasons for his identification between God and truth. He saw the nature of God’s timeless being as a key also to identifying God with truth. The link between God and truth is the Platonic “one.” Augustine puts the forms in the mind of God, so God becomes the forms really. The basis of this identification is based partly upon God’s eternal nature. From that point on it’s all an easy identification between eternal verities, such as truth, eternal being, beauty, the one, and God. The other half of the equation is God’s revelation of himself as eternal and necessary through the phrase, for very similar reasons to those listed already by Gilson, between I am that I am and being itself (or in Augustine’s case the transcended of being). “He answers, disclosing himself to creature as Creator, as God to man, as Immortal to mortal, eternal to a thing of time he answers ‘I am who I am.’”[5]

From Psalm 101:25 he ponders the phrase “generation of generations” rather than the choice of saying your years is endless.” He concludes that this Psalm is not merely saying God is living through a parade of endless years but that God is timeless. He concludes that the generation of generations is a timeless generation. He concludes that God’s years are his substance, they cannot be separated from God himself (as we see ‘substance” can be a way of saying “being). “God’s years are God’s eternity, his eternity is God’s very substance.” Thus God is not only eternal but his being his essence coincide, his eternal nature is the same as his being. Thus God is eternal necessary being.[6]

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[1] Reality: Readings in Phlosophy. Indianapolis, Indiana:Hackett Pulbishing company, inc. Carl Avren Levenson, John Westphal, editors, 1994, 54

[2] Donald Keef, Thomism and the Ontological Theology: A Comparison of Systems. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1971, 140.

The “two Ultimates” discussed are philosophy and Religion.

[3] Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, 12-13

[4] The quotation above from the Levenson and Westphal book says Augistine believe God was being itself, Marion seems to say that Augustine put God beyond being. I think it’s debatable as to which he did because he didn’t say directly which it was. I’m assuming Marion is probably right just because of the time in which he lived and because he was a Platonic thinker.

[5] Levenson and Westphal, Ibid. translated by Edmond Hill

[6] Ibid, trans in Enarrationes in Psalm. 101

The Euthyphro Dilemma

The Euthyphro Dilemma

have theology: Will Argue

Originally Posted (on CARM) by MikeWC

This is a long post. The final paragraph is a summary of the argument, if you wish to just straight to it.

The Euthyphro dilemma can be briefly stated this way: either morality comes entirely from God, in which case it is changeable according to his will, or it comes from outside God, in which case God is unnecessary.

Actually I think he stated it wrong. I don't think the second horn of the dilemma is that if it comes from out of God morality is "unnecessary," but that God is not supreme. One thing that's going to figure big in my answer is this fact: The Euthyphro dilemma was applicable to the Greek gods only becuase they were not God in the sense that the Bible God is God, nor were they God in the sense that the God of Aquinas or Anslem is God or. Greek gods were contingent beings, they were not eternal, they were products of prior beings. God in the Christian sense is the eternal necessary aspect of all being. Thus That God is necessary and not contingent, and is not the produce of prior condition.

That makes a big difference because it is only the contingency of the Greek gods that gives them their relative nature and thus enables the Fates to outrank them in terms of power. That's where the entire dilemma stems from, that Zeus was subject to the fates. The God of Abraham, of Issac and of Jacob is not subject to any fates. The God of Christianity freed humanity from the cruelty of fate, and still frees us form determinism. This is so becuase the eternal necessary aspect of all being, is bigger than any deterministic aspect of being, which is only a contingency HE created in the first place.

Mike WC says:

There is an increasingly popular refutation of the old Euthyphro dilemma among apologists. It is an attempt to split the horns of the dilemma by creating a third alternative. The alternative is to identity the Good wholly with God's nature: being Good is one of God's essential attributes.

Without meaning to boast I think I really do I am the person who started that answer. I don't remember ever seeing it on the net before I gave it. Once I argued it a few times on prominent atheist boards people began to talk about it. In any case, "being good" is not a mere attribute of God as though it's on a par with being short or tall, fat or thin, it's based upon the nature of God. That is certainly no exaggeration; in the Christian tradition God is the basis of the good which stems from God's nature as love. St. Augustine said love is the background of the moral universe, and by that meant that God, as truth itself, as being itself is the basis upon which the good has meaning. Augustine put the forms in the mind of God, so anything like "the good" that under Plato would be a product of the forums would be a product of the Mind of God.

Mike WC: "This idea is meant to dissolve the dilemma by taking the pros of each horn, while eliminating the cons. Morality is not changeable according to God's will, because it lies eternally in his nature. And it is not outside God for the same reason." Here he more or less gets it right. What it really does is bring out the distinction between eternal necessary being vs. contingent beings. The contingent beings who are called "gods" only because they are more powerful than mortals and last longer (although they can die and hey have origins so they are not eternal), can't supply the ultimate basis for philosophical grounding that eternal necessary being does supply.

In answer to this point Mike says:

My argument is that this just creates a new dilemma. This refutation of Euthyphro depends on God having both a will and a nature. This may seem trivial, but let's draw out the consequences.In order for the refutation to stand, there must be a clear division between God's will and God's nature. If no such division exists, then then all this refutation has done is accept the first horn: God could change morality through his will.

I don't think there has to be a "clear division." There seems to be no problem with asserting that a consciousness has both a will and a nature. They are clearly two separate things, but one would be in line with the other as a nature would always govern the limits and capacity of a will. How could on demand something apart form one's own nature? Will is usually thought of as an expression of a nature. He is certainly going to have to furnish a reason for us to think this would be the case.

The problem with this atheist position is, ironically, it's Calvinistic-like implications. Calvin emphasized the will of God over and above creative wisdom (creative wisdom is God's nature). Like the good little fundies that atheists are they want o split off the will from nature when in reality will is just an aspect of nature. Think about it. The nature of a thing is the way it is. Now how can will be part of the way God is without being part of his nature?

Mike WC:

However, if this division is too rigid, then it falls to the second horn: you are positing a God that is, in effect, split. There is a divine will, and then there is a divine nature. The divine will answers wholly to the divine nature, which has no will of its own. When God issues a moral command, there is a gap between the decision to issue the command and the source of the command.

This is merely a false dilemma. The will of any being is part of that being's nature and works according to that nature. The nature of God is primarily love, so the will of God is based upon love. Are we ever given a reson to think that God's will is out of line with his nature? I think not. Ah but Mike shoots back with this classic assertion:

If God's nature has no will of its own, then it is it not collapsible into a Good outside and above God's will? And then, why can't humans just by pass God's will and just talk about the Good? In other words, the gap between will and nature is just a different version of the second horn of Euthyphro.Notice, he has not yet expalined by God can't have a will of his own as part of his nature?

This is what we call "begging the question." He's merely asserting a conclusion which he basis his premise, the conclusion that he wants to come to, then uses it as a premise to justify coming to it. In this classic move of circular reasoning he asserts the very point under contention as though it's a proof of his position (thus begging the question). If God's nature has no will of it own, he asserts. The problem there is it does, that's the whole point I've been making. Moreover, he can give us no other reason to assume this is the case except that "If this was the case. I would be right." God's nature has a will of it's own, it's called "God's will." That's what will is, it's an expression of our nature. There's no point in asserting that the nature has a second will that's in contradiction to the first will? Why assert that? He gives us no reason.

He asserts that the "gap between will and nature is just a different version of the second horn of the" dilemma. No it's not. Why would that be? The second horn is that there's a standard independent of God. Since that standard is God himself, it's not separate; WC is trying to turn that into a whole seperate person with real reason for doing so, there's no assume it. He asserts that this second is the gap but what gap? He has to first suggest why there would be a gap and has no done so.

Mike WC:

Perhaps you could say that God's nature is unknowable for humans, outside of God's willing revelation of himself. This does not solve the problem, however. If God has exclusive and exhaustive knowledge of his own nature, we must accept one of two interpretations of this.

We know God's nature; it's love. We know this through God's self revelation to us and our empirical experience of God's presence. It's a false dilemma. There is no dilemma. God moves to bring people into the sphere of his love. God is about love; this furnishes the background of the moral universe. He doesn't just hand down laws from on high,they are not arbitrary whims. The real problem of the dilemma is that on the one hand if good is just God's command with no independent standard then God is arbitrary and good is just a whim. If God is independent of the standard then he's not fully in charge and so is not God. The position I have taken resolves the problem because it says God's commands are not independent of Go but neither are they arbitrary whims, they are manifestations of purpose and wisdom in creation which harken form God's loving nature, that is the basis of the good. That is an answer we could not get from the Geek gods.

The rule keeping aspect of morality didn't work, and God tells us it didn't work (of he knew it wouldn't it was only a a ruse to show us why we have to internalize the values of the good--see Jer. 31/Heb 1:1). We employ the moral law placed inside us and we filter it through cultural constructs. That's what makes ethical and the morality of a culture, but the background against which all ethical moves are played out is God's divine love, aka agape. 2) God's nature is an object separate from his will,
conjecture not in evidence. That is merely the upshot of the subject/object dichotomy. He needs to learn some phenomenology becuase that just reduces God to an object. We can experience God's nature. We may not understand it intellectually but we can experience and we can intuit it. That's what mystics are about.

Mike asserts: "This is perhaps the only way out for the apologist, to claim that the Good is essentially unknowable for humans." God is beyond our understanding but that doesn't mean he's unknowable. you are confusing experiential knowledge with book learning and facts.

Mike WC

This does not solve the logical problem of there being a gap between God's commands and the source of those commands, however. Humans would be incapable of bypassing God's commands and revelation, but this is not because of a logical impossibility, but rather the infinitude of humanity.

Again he asserts a gap without giving us any reason to think there is one. He can imagine one based upon skepticism that is a far cry from proving there is one. It's just a product of his hermeneutic of skepticism. Logically linking God's commands to his nature f love resolves the problem complete because it means the standards is not separate from God nor is it an arbitrary whim, and there is basic reason ever given to imagine a gap. What I've said aboe about love as the background of the moral universe shows that a gap is not really possible becuase the whole concept of the moral apart form God's love is impossible. It would have no meaning as a moral universe. The moral law that God has placed upon our hearts is God's command in line with God's nature, God is not forging a moral law as a subject of higher power but is translating what is in his heart. speaking metaphorically of "heart."

The knowability issue is not really much of an issue. God is beyond our understanding intellectually but that's kind of knowledge we need to live morally. The kind of knolwedge we need is empirical knowledge of God's love and revelation knowledge of god's commands, although that is placed on the heart is available though natural theology. There are many theological methods and systems that would answer this arguemnt. One of them majors is the Eastern orthodox concept of mystical union which turns upon apoplectic theology (negative--don't say that it is but what ti's not).

Euthyphro dilemma is only an issue where God is contingent and there is a higher power. There is no higher power than the eternal necesasry aspect of being. In the OT he's called "I Am." In the NT he's called "Our father who art in Heaven."

The Euthephro Dilemma

 The Euthyphro  Dilemma
 
 have theology: Will Argue

Originally Posted (on CARM) by MikeWC

This is a long post. The final paragraph is a summary of the argument, if you wish to just straight to it.

The Euthyphro dilemma can be briefly stated this way: either morality comes entirely from God, in which case it is changeable according to his will, or it comes from outside God, in which case God is unnecessary.

 Actually I think he stated it wrong. I don't think the second horn of the dilemma is that if it comes from out of God morality is "unnecessary," but that God is not supreme. One thing that's going to figure big in my answer is this fact: The Euthyphro dilemma was applicable to the Greek gods only becuase they were not God in the sense that the Bible God is God, nor were they God in the sense that the God of Aquinas or Anslem is God or. Greek gods were contingent beings, they were not eternal, they were products of prior beings. God in the Christian sense is the eternal necessary aspect of all being. Thus That God is necessary and not contingent, and is not the produce of prior condition.

That makes a big difference because it is only the contingency of the Greek gods that gives them their relative nature and thus enables the Fates to outrank them in terms of power. That's where the entire dilemma stems from, that Zeus was subject to the fates. The God of Abraham, of Issac and of Jacob is not subject to any fates. The God of Christianity freed humanity from the cruelty of fate, and still frees us form determinism. This is so becuase the eternal necessary aspect of all being, is bigger than any deterministic aspect of being, which is only a contingency HE created in the first place.

Mike WC says:

There is an increasingly popular refutation of the old Euthyphro dilemma among apologists. It is an attempt to split the horns of the dilemma by creating a third alternative. The alternative is to identity the Good wholly with God's nature: being Good is one of God's essential attributes.

Without meaning to boast I think I really do I am the person who started that answer. I don't remember ever seeing it on the net before I gave it. Once I argued it a few times on prominent atheist boards people began to talk about it. In any case, "being good" is not a mere attribute of God as though it's on a par with being short or tall, fat or thin, it's based upon the nature of God. That is certainly no exaggeration; in the Christian tradition God is the basis of the good which stems from God's nature as love. St. Augustine said love is the background of the moral universe, and by that meant that God, as truth itself, as being itself is the basis upon which the good has meaning. Augustine put the forms in the mind of God, so anything like "the good" that under Plato would be a product of the forums would be a product of the Mind of God.

Mike WC: "This idea is meant to dissolve the dilemma by taking the pros of each horn, while eliminating the cons. Morality is not changeable according to God's will, because it lies eternally in his nature. And it is not outside God for the same reason." Here he more or less gets it right. What it really does is bring out the distinction between eternal necessary being vs. contingent beings. The contingent beings who are called "gods" only because they are more powerful than mortals and last longer (although they can die and hey have origins so they are not eternal), can't supply the ultimate basis for philosophical grounding that eternal necessary being does supply.

In answer to this point Mike says:

My argument is that this just creates a new dilemma. This refutation of Euthyphro depends on God having both a will and a nature. This may seem trivial, but let's draw out the consequences.In order for the refutation to stand, there must be a clear division between God's will and God's nature. If no such division exists, then then all this refutation has done is accept the first horn: God could change morality through his will. 

 I don't think there has to be a "clear division." There seems to be no problem with asserting that a consciousness has both a  will and a nature. They are clearly two separate things, but one would be in line with the other as a nature would always govern the limits and capacity of a will. How could on demand something apart form one's own nature?  Will is usually thought of as an expression of a nature. He is certainly going to have to furnish a reason for us to think this would be the case.

The problem with this atheist position  is, ironically, it's Calvinistic-like implications. Calvin emphasized the will of God over and above creative wisdom (creative wisdom is God's nature). Like the good little fundies that atheists are they want o split off the will from nature when in reality will is just an aspect of nature. Think about it. The nature of a thing is the way it is. Now how can will be part of the way God is without being part of his nature?

Mike WC:

However, if this division is too rigid, then it falls to the second horn: you are positing a God that is, in effect, split. There is a divine will, and then there is a divine nature. The divine will answers wholly to the divine nature, which has no will of its own. When God issues a moral command, there is a gap between the decision to issue the command and the source of the command.

This is merely a false dilemma. The will of any being is part of that being's nature and works according to that nature. The nature of God is primarily love, so the will of God is based upon love. Are we ever given a reson to think that God's will is out of line with his nature? I think not. Ah but Mike shoots back with this classic assertion:

If God's nature has no will of its own, then it is it not collapsible into a Good outside and above God's will? And then, why can't humans just by pass God's will and just talk about the Good? In other words, the gap between will and nature is just a different version of the second horn of Euthyphro.Notice, he has not yet expalined by God can't have a will of his own as part of his nature?

This is what we call "begging the question." He's merely asserting a conclusion which he basis his premise, the conclusion that he wants to come to, then uses it as a premise to justify coming to it. In this classic move of circular reasoning he asserts the very point under contention as though it's a proof of his position (thus begging the question). If God's nature has no will of it own, he asserts. The problem there is it does, that's the whole point I've been making. Moreover, he can give us no other reason to assume this is the case except that "If this was the case. I would be right." God's nature has a will of it's own, it's called "God's will." That's what will is, it's an expression of our nature. There's no point in asserting that the nature has a second will that's in contradiction to the first will? Why assert that? He gives us no reason.

He asserts that the "gap  between will and nature is just a different version of the second horn of the" dilemma. No it's not. Why would that be? The second horn is that there's a standard independent of God. Since that standard is God himself, it's not separate; WC is trying to turn that into a whole seperate person with real reason for doing so, there's no assume it.  He asserts that this second is the gap but what gap? He has to first suggest why there would be a gap and has no done so.

Mike WC:

Perhaps you could say that God's nature is unknowable for humans, outside of God's willing revelation of himself. This does not solve the problem, however. If God has exclusive and exhaustive knowledge of his own nature, we must accept one of two interpretations of this.

 We know God's nature; it's love. We know this through God's self revelation to us and our empirical experience of God's presence. It's a false dilemma. There is no dilemma. God moves to bring people into the sphere of his love. God is about love; this furnishes the background of the moral universe. He doesn't just hand down laws from on high,they are not arbitrary whims. The real problem of the dilemma is that on the one hand if good is just God's command with no independent standard then God is arbitrary and good is just a whim. If God is independent of the standard then he's not fully in charge and so is not God. The position I have taken resolves the problem because it says God's commands are not independent of Go but neither are they arbitrary whims, they are manifestations of purpose and wisdom in creation which harken form God's loving nature, that is the basis of the good. That is an answer we could not get from the Geek gods.

The rule keeping aspect of morality didn't work, and God tells us it didn't work (of he knew it wouldn't it was only a a ruse to show us why we have to internalize the values of the good--see Jer. 31/Heb 1:1). We employ the moral law placed inside us and we filter it through cultural constructs. That's what makes ethical and the morality of a culture, but the background against which all ethical moves are played out is God's divine love, aka agape. 2) God's nature is an object separate from his will,
conjecture not in evidence. That is merely the upshot of the subject/object dichotomy. He needs to learn some phenomenology becuase that just reduces God to an object. We can experience God's nature. We may not understand it intellectually  but we can experience and we can intuit it. That's what mystics are about.

Mike asserts: "This is perhaps the only way out for the apologist, to claim that the Good is essentially unknowable for humans."  God is beyond our understanding but that doesn't mean he's unknowable. you are confusing experiential knowledge with book learning and facts.

Mike WC

This does not solve the logical problem of there being a gap between God's commands and the source of those commands, however. Humans would be incapable of bypassing God's commands and revelation, but this is not because of a logical impossibility, but rather the infinitude of humanity.

Again he asserts a gap without giving us any reason to think there is one. He can imagine one based upon skepticism that is a far cry from proving there is one. It's just a product of his hermeneutic of skepticism. Logically linking God's commands to his nature f love resolves the problem complete because it means the standards is not separate from God nor is it an arbitrary whim, and there is basic  reason ever given to imagine a gap. What I've said aboe about love as the background of the moral universe shows that a gap is not really possible becuase the whole concept of the moral apart form God's love is impossible. It would have no meaning as a moral universe. The moral law that God has placed upon our hearts is God's command in line with God's nature, God is not forging a moral law as a subject of higher power but is translating what is in his heart. speaking metaphorically of "heart."

The knowability issue is not really much of an issue. God is beyond our understanding intellectually but that's kind of knowledge we need to live morally. The kind of knolwedge we need is empirical knowledge of God's love and revelation knowledge of god's commands, although that is placed on the heart is available though natural  theology. There are many theological methods and systems that would answer this arguemnt. One of them majors is the Eastern orthodox concept of mystical union which turns upon apoplectic theology (negative--don't say that it is but what ti's not).

Euthyphro  dilemma is only an issue where God is contingent and there is a higher power. There is no higher power than the eternal necesasry aspect of being. In the OT he's called "I Am." In the NT he's called "Our father who art in Heaven."

St Augustine's Corrolation: God, Truth, Being itself

Botticelli's concept of St. Augustine

…St. Augustine’s view that God is being itself is based partly upon Platonism (“God is that which truly is” and partly on the Bible—“I am that I am”). The transcendence of time as a condition of full reality is a central theme…[in Augustine’s work].[1]

Of course Augustine was one of the seminal thinkers of all Church history. Along with Aquinas he’s probably one of the two most important theologians of all time. He might be called the last thinker in the tradition of the classical age. His view of the Trinity cemented the Orthodox position and set the Western view of Trinity on it’s trajectory diverging from the eastern Church. His work The City of God is one of the greatest theological master pieces of all time, and to think it’s a letter to friend (a letter the size of the New York Phone book).

Augustine expresses the concept of the super-essential Godhead many times and in many ways. Augustine was a Platonist. In that regard perhaps his greatest innovation was to place the Platonic forms in the mind of God. That is a major innovation because it trumps the Neo-Platonistic following after Plotinus, who conceived of a form of the forms. In Augustinian understanding the equivalent of the “the one” the form that holds all other forms within itself is the mind of God. Augustine never made an argument for the existence of God because for him God was known with certainty and immediacy. God is immediately discerned in the apprehension of truth, thus need not be “proved.” God is the basis of all truth, and therefore, cannot be the object of questioning about truth, since God is he medium through which other truths can be known.[2] Tillich said:

Augustine, after he had experienced all the implications of ancient skepticism, gave a classical answer to the problem of the two absolutes: they coincide in the nature of truth. Veritas is presupposed in ever philosophical argument; and veritas is God. You cannot deny truth as such because you could do it only in the name of truth, thus establishing truth. And if you establish truth you affirm God. “Where I have found the truth there I have found my God, the truth itself,” Augustine says. The question of the two Ultimates is solved in such a way that the religious Ultimate is presupposed in every philosophical question, including the question of God. God is the presupposition of the question of God. This is the ontological solution of the problem of the philosophy of religion. God can never be reached if he is the object of a question and not its basis.[3]

Augustine says God is truth. He doesn’t so much say God is being as he says God is truth. But to say this in this way is actually in line with the general theme we have been discussing, the one I call “super-essential Godhead,” or Tillich’s existential ontology. Augustine puts the emphasis upon God’s name as love, not being. Since he was a neo Platonist he thought of true reality as beyond being and thus he thought of God as “beyond being.”[4] This makes no sense in a modern setting since for us “to be” is reality, and to not be part of being would meaning being unreal. But in the platonic context, true reality was beyond this level of reality and what we think of as “our reality” or “our world” is only a plane reflection of the true reality. We are creatures of a refection in a mud puddle and the thing reflected that is totally removed from our being is the true reality. It was this distinction Tillich tried to preserve by distinguishing between being and existence.

Augustine looked to the same passage in Exodus that Gilson quotes in connection with Aquinas. Augustine’s conclusions are much the same about that phrase “I am that I am.” This is one of his key reasons for his identification between God and truth. He saw the nature of God’s timeless being as a key also to identifying God with truth. The link between God and truth is the Platonic “one.” Augustine puts the forms in the mind of God, so God becomes the forms really. The basis of this identification is based partly upon God’s eternal nature. From that point on it’s all an easy identification between eternal verities, such as truth, eternal being, beauty, the one, and God. The other half of the equation is God’s revelation of himself as eternal and necessary through the phrase, for very similar reasons to those listed already by Gilson, between I am that I am and being itself (or in Augustine’s case the transcended of being). “He answers, disclosing himself to creature as Creator, as God to man, as Immortal to mortal, eternal to a thing of time he answers ‘I am who I am.’”[5]

From Psalm 101:25 he ponders the phrase “generation of generations” rather than the choice of saying your years is endless.” He concludes that this Psalm is not merely saying God is living through a parade of endless years but that God is timeless. He concludes that the generation of generations is a timeless generation. He concludes that God’s years are his substance, they cannot be separated from God himself (as we see ‘substance” can be a way of saying “being). “God’s years are God’s eternity, his eternity is God’s very substance.” Thus God is not only eternal but his being his essence coincide, his eternal nature is the same as his being. Thus God is eternal necessary being.[6]

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[1] Reality: Readings in Phlosophy. Indianapolis, Indiana:Hackett Pulbishing company, inc. Carl Avren Levenson, John Westphal, editors, 1994, 54

[2] Donald Keef, Thomism and the Ontological Theology: A Comparison of Systems. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1971, 140.

The “two Ultimates” discussed are philosophy and Religion.

[3] Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, 12-13

[4] The quotation above from the Levenson and Westphal book says Augistine believe God was being itself, Marion seems to say that Augustine put God beyond being. I think it’s debatable as to which he did because he didn’t say directly which it was. I’m assuming Marion is probably right just because of the time in which he lived and because he was a Platonic thinker.

[5] Levenson and Westphal, Ibid. translated by Edmond Hill

[6] Ibid, trans in Enarrationes in Psalm. 101

God is not a Plausible Explaination for the Universe: God is Truth

Atheists have often argued that God is not a plausible explanation for the universe. What they mean by that is that we don't know enough about God to judge the value of the explanation, and that issues such as the complexity problem prevent a clear understanding. The plausible explanation thing is not a very good standard by which to judge the efficacy of belief. The reason for religions is not a scientific motivation to explain the workings of the physical world. The reason religion exists is becuase we have an empirical sense of the numinous, a sense referred to as "the religious a priori." Religion is not intended as an explanation in the sense that scinece is. It's not meant to be a means of explaining the workings of the physical world. That kind of thinking went out with the nineteenth century.

The concept of God is that of the foundation of reality. There is no basis for a standard of plausibility in dealing with foundations of reality since we have no other examples of foundational reality to compare to. This observation in a nutshell beats all of their arguments about plausibility, because it says that plausibility is the wrong standard by which to judge the efficacy of belief. This observation leads to a realization that actually destroys most of the arguments made about God an probability and standard of scinece.

Science has to have two things: predictive power and falsifiability. That's in addition to replicator and representative sample and double all the together things all of those are made impossible if you don't have these two. Science can't prove it can only disprove. if there is no disproof it's not assumed proven it's assumed a match with theory then theory is assumed to be verisimilitude. Science is not the acquisition of truth its' verisimilitude.


Since God is synonymous with truth (according to the primordial assertion of belief--that's the foundational assumption made in belief--the religious a prori) God is not subject to falsification. God is not subject to predictability God is not a matter of empiricism becuase God is not a thing in creation. This idea that God is synonymous with turth is met with consternation by atheists, and one can understand why. One might think this is becuase since the atheist is dedicated to rejecting believe he/she can't very well accept a religious a priori that puts God in at the foundational level. Yet, there's a more basic reason than that why this idea is upsetting them. It's because it is predicated upon a different notion of truth than any that they understand or have been taught to think about. The typical atheist notion of truth is pretty much one of verisimilitude. It's surface level, it excludes any sort of depth of being. Things are not any more than they seem. There's no underlying issue with being it's just a surface matter of does X exist or not?

The notion of truth with which St. Augustine understood God's synonymy is a kin to the concept dreaded by Postmoderns, the "meta narrative." We are talking about Truth with a capital "T." In bold letters yet. This notion of truth is the overarching explanation for all of reality, depth and all, not just the surface explanation of the existence of a given X. This kind of truth is apt to be rejected by atheists because it hints at not only God but notions such as sin and judgment and virtue and the whole metaphysical nine yards. This is not only installing God at the epistemological and metaphysical level, without a fight so to speak, but it also excludes the replacement religion atheism turns to for substitution in the face of losing the advantages of God belief. In other words, one can't work the doings of science upon the epistemic foundation of reality becuase it's at a higher epistemological level than anything in science: it's not a matter of inductive abstraction.


Belief in God can be warranted or unwarranted, not proved or disproved.

Augustine never made an argument for the existence of God because for him God was known with certainty and immediacy. God is immediately discerned in the apprehension of truth, thus need not be “proved.” God is the basis of all truth, and therefore, cannot be the object of questioning about truth, since God is he medium through which other truths can be known.[1] Tillich said:

Augustine, after he had experienced all the implications of ancient skepticism, gave a classical answer to the problem of the two absolutes: they coincide in the nature of truth. Veritas is presupposed in ever philosophical argument; and veritas is God. You cannot deny truth as such because you could do it only in the name of truth, thus establishing truth. And if you establish truth you affirm God. “Where I have found the truth there I have found my God, the truth itself,” Augustine says. The question of the two Ultimates is solved in such a way that the religious Ultimate is presupposed in every philosophical question, including the question of God. God is the presupposition of the question of God. This is the ontological solution of the problem of the philosophy of religion. God can never be reached if he is the object of a question and not its basis.[2]

Augustine says God is truth. He doesn’t so much say God is being as he says God is truth. But to say this in this way is actually in line with the general theme we have been discussing, the one I call “super-essential Godhead,” or Tillich’s existential ontology. Augustine puts the emphasis upon God’s name as love, not being. Since he was a neo Platonist he thought of true reality as beyond being and thus he thought of God as “beyond being.”[3] This makes no sense in a modern setting since for us “to be” is reality, and to not be part of being would meaning being unreal. But in the platonic context, true reality was beyond this level of reality and what we think of as “our reality” or “our world” is only a plane reflection of the true reality. We are creatures of a refection in a mud puddle and the thing reflected that is totally removed from our being is the true reality. It was this distinction Tillich tried to preserve by distinguishing between being and existence.

Augustine looked to the same passage in Exodus that Gilson quotes in connection with Aquinas. Augustine’s conclusions are much the same about that phrase “I am that I am.” This is one of his key reasons for his identification between God and truth. He saw the nature of God’s timeless being as a key also to identifying God with truth. The link between God and truth is the Platonic “one.” Augustine puts the forms in the mind of God, so God becomes the forms really. The basis of this identification is based partly upon God’s eternal nature. From that point on it’s all an easy identification between eternal verities, such as truth, eternal being, beauty, the one, and God. The other half of the equation is God’s revelation of himself as eternal and necessary through the phrase, for very similar reasons to those listed already by Gilson, between I am that I am and being itself (or in Augustine’s case the transcended of being). “He answers, disclosing himself to creature as Creator, as God to man, as Immortal to mortal, eternal to a thing of time he answers ‘I am who I am.’”[4]

That means in accepting belief in god one is not merely adding a fact to the universe or accepting a proposition about the existence of another thing in the world, but accepting a concept of truth as opposed to other concepts of truth.

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[1] Donald Keef, Thomism and the Ontological Theology: A Comparison of Systems. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1971, 140.

The “two Ultimates” discussed are philosophy and Religion.

[2] Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, 12-13

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[3] The quotation above from the Levenson and Westphal book says Augistine believe God was being itself, Marion seems to say that Augustine put God beyond being. I think it’s debatable as to which he did because he didn’t say directly which it was. I’m assuming Marion is probably right just because of the time in which he lived and because he was a Platonic thinker.

[4] Carl Levenson and Johnathan Westphal, ed, Reality:Hackett readings Philosophy. " New York: Hackett Publishing. translated by Edmond Hill, 54 see the link