Homepage of Professor Botond Gaál

Truth and reality in exploring the possibilities of Christian thought

by

Botond Gaál

Professor of Systematic Theology

Debrecen Reformed Theological University,

Debrecen, Hungary

 

Taking first a master’s degree in mathematics and physics at the Debrecen University in Hungary and then studying theology at the Debrecen Reformed Theological University, I engaged into the research of the development of the Western Civilization from the viewpoint of Christian theology and natural sciences. I have long been interested in three eras, in other words, three shifts of paradigm tending to conceal themselves from rational approach, as far as the historic development of scientific thinking is concerned. The first change took place after Greek culture had developed which was shortly followed by the rise of Christianity. It seems evident that the Christian way of thinking is the continuation of the theology present in the Old Testament, but Christian teaching about the world was without any precedent in the history of ideology of ancient times. However, Greek science and Christian thought were not insensitive to each other, but the essence of their long and desperate fight is only recognized when, after the victory of the latter, one looks back upon events, i.e. they are approached in a retrospective manner. The second era is represented by the activities of Galileo and Newton. It is their name that is associated with the actual scientific way of thinking as classical mechanism would have been unable to emerge from the Greek ideal itself. It is widely known that the science of this era is thickly interwoven with the Christian way of thinking, too. It is time to ask what they have got to do with each other? Is there any continuity between Greek science and the exact sciences born in the modern times? The third great dilemma and/or change came to light in the 20th century when some invisible transformation in the conceptual background of empirico-theoretical fields of science brought about the situation due to which scientific and Christian theological thinking are now seen in congeniality. There is, however, another unanswered question wether or not the whole process took place that way because theology also underwent transformation of a similar type and equally large scale.

     In this article, I would like to find the answer to these three problems by briefly raising the relationship of truth and reality. I am convinced that not only theology but also exact sciences will benefit from it. Moreover, finding an answer may help the better understanding and mutual support of theology and exact sciences.

     The beginnings of the European civilization date back to approximately 600 BC when the great thinkers of Greece raised the question, "What is reality?" While the people of Eastern cultures were mainly interested in what reality was like, the Greek got to the point that reality was not simply what their eye saw or their ear heard but what the mind thought it to be. Let us here just refer to the life-work of some great thinkers such as Tales, Parmenides, Heraclitus or Socrates. At that time, this idea was as novel as the discovery about the discontinuity of energy made in the 20th century. For the Greeks this recognition also meant spiritual coherence and thus they paved the path for scientific thinking since they used the mind to learn about reality. Despite all debates, dilemmas and seemingly inconsistent manifestations the coherence of their philosophy was due to the fact that the truth revealed by the mind coincided with reality for them. It was to happen 2000 years later for the modern times to reveal that the Greek way of thinking led to a dead-end. Until that time science could progress amidst hard battles and fights. We must ask some more questions: Who and what was the hard-fighting party struggling to find the right way in this battle? Who were daring to oppose the Greek spirit? These exciting questions are worth finding answers to.

     The Greek idea of coinciding truth and reality was most seriously supported by Plato. He was highly interested in how knowledge was born. He wanted to possess firm knowledge about reality, hoping to be able to grasp reality via that knowledge. In his opinion, the changing, therefore unrecognizable, world could not be made the object of knowledge. So, instead of the perceivable, observable world he found reality in a timeless, steady and unchanging world, or, in other words, he associated the existence of the universe surrounding man with the latter kind of world. Sometimes his ideas reflected that he took the observable world for reality too, and in those cases he tried to find the way how to ensure transition between the "two realities". He succeeded in doing so; he had the following words written above the entrance of his Academy: „No one lacking the knowledge in geometry should enter here". Plato found the way to firm knowledge in geometry through which he could reach the presumed reality of the world of ideas. He dealt so extensively with geometry that, in the end, he got confused about the concept of space and came to the conclusion that space was neither an idea nor part of observable reality but it was something else, "the third thing" which was still permanent and unchanged. At that point even he confessed that space was accessible through a detour of reasoning1, i.e. one could not have firm knowledge about space any longer. Plato could not say how space was related to the material world and this led the development of sciences off the track and prevented his followers from creating relevant thoughts for the coming centuries. It was his conviction that, through the mind, one could get to true reality present in the divine sphere of the surrounding world. Thus truth and reality meant inseparable unity for him.

     Since his father was a doctor, Aristotle had a good sense of reality. For him the world was a living organism in constant change whose reality could be understood via the organs of perception and conceptual way of thinking. One can get hold of truth if he finds the principal relationships, i.e. the famous principles listed by him, in everything. To achieve this, one does not need to degrade reality to the level of illusion as it was done by Plato. But he who takes a closer look at his system will soon realize from the details that Aristotle was also a genuine Greek philosopher in the very sense of the word. He agreed with his predecessors that everything that existed carried something permanent but, at the same time, it contained changeable elements, too. One can recognize the ideas of Parmenides and Heraclitus, i.e. the principle of the general and individual in a different form. According to Aristotle, the essence of reality is found in perceivable things and it can only be separated from them by concept-formation or thinking.² So with Aristotle, reality is also found in the spiritual region as it is the constant and unchanged parameter in everything. Objects are perceived via the senses and the mind recognizes the truth forming them and the two together are what we understand by reality. But reality created by the mind should come first.

     At this point, Aristotle got trapped in the labyrinth of his own complicated ideas and could hardly find the way out but, being considered to be Alexander the Great in  philosophy, he was able to cut the Gordian knot using a brilliant solution: If  perception does give rise to knowledge which is taken as superior truth by the mind, it is not enough to say that human intellect picks up the individual or the general, universal by perception or thinking, respectively. As both of them have different objects it is inevitable to distinguish two kinds of functions in the mind, too. One is the so called nous patheticos (the form-receiving one), the other is known as nous poethicos (the form-giving one). The former receives information via the senses whereas the latter forms concepts as pure actuality. And here comes the great step forward! According to Aristotle, the form-giving nous poethicos is not a physical part of the human being, it cannot be affected or influenced because in that case it would obey to an inferior function. On the contrary, that is what Aristotle thought to be eternal and unchanged presuming that this part of the mind was given to man as a divine gift. Like in the microcosm, nous poethicos becomes the "Nr 1 force" of pure spiritual nature, the pure intellectual factor in man in Aristotle's approach.² He also explains the idea of the first static deity with a driving force. Being quite close to the dualism of Plato, this approach can be regarded as its somewhat sober but hidden form.

     Plato's solution placing the material world and the intellectual world on different sides of an almost irreconcilable gap was not very attractive for the stoics. They could not fully agree with Aristotle's contradictory ideas either, as, in the system elaborated by him, the perceivable world was kept in motion by a distant, cool and static deity. Even then it was clear that, compared with Plato's system, Aristotle was able to bring the deity created by the mind closer to the real world. The stoics made one more step forward bringing the deity so close to the world that he became one with the world in a pantheistic way. Using the famous word 'logos' they spoke about the world-governing divine intelligence.

     Current research into the development of the idea of space shows that all of the stoic philosophers inevitably included the deity in their systems according to the expectations of their era. They put the deity in nature which comes handy in explaining their ethics. In their opinion, the recognition of the universal law of divine origin in the world and its objects by the perceiving intellect and living up to that law are both preconditions to one's happiness or moral way of life. Material is a passive, inferior reality whereas deity, the active intellectual force moving material, is superior reality. The intellect tries to learn about the latter one thus, through the mind, man learning about the essence of nature becomes similar to a deity2. So truth recognized by the mind corresponds to reality in the stoic approach, too.

     When ancient mentality is examined as a source and its effects are considered, two essential factors should be brought in mind. They are the development and importance of contemporary mathematics and the nature of the Jewish way of religious thinking.

     Ancient mathematics will be examined here through the contemporary eye on one hand and retrospectively, on the other. When, in his work entitled 'Elements', Euclid summed up the knowledge about mathematics piled up until his time, he actually described everything about the topic collected by Greek science.3 The Greeks seem to have rather discovered than created mathematics.4 They discovered principal and logical truths and their objectivity in mathematics but did not come to the conclusion that those truths belonged to reality of divine level. On the other hand, the Greeks also added to mathematics as the methods such as evidence based on a system of axioms enabled them to obtain further knowledge. But this is the point where we should recognize two very important facts. One of them is that the mathematics of the Greeks, forming an inconsistent system, has proved to be an asset independent of cultures.4 Unlike scientific knowledge, the truths in this system are independent of the era. They are essential truths of their own nature but, in contrast to what the Greeks thought, they are not truths in the absolute sense. Greek mathematics has become the precious pearl of scientific history due to the relative truths it carried. Despite the fact that it carries relative truths, Euclidean geometry has always been true, let us just think of the past, present and future.4 However, it remains a secret why this mathematics was disused in the practical description of the functioning of the universe. This field of science was yet unsuitable to act as a tool in the understanding of the universe at that time. Why? Very likely because the understanding of natural phenomena was at a low level and there was nothing to be expressed via the special language of mathematics. Mathematics itself had its inner problem of how to explain relations expressed in numbers in a geometrical context.5

     While the Greeks were preoccupied with the ideas of 'Good' and 'True', the Jews kept thinking in a completely different manner. They were not in need of timeless ideas, notions or primitive images. Nor were they curious to learn about theories which could have been used to describe forces keeping the universe running. Moreover, they were disinterested in creating ideas. It was not the thought but deed that became their God,5 who set his chosen people free from Egypt in reality, too. So the Jews worshipped a transcendent God, who was not the result of a logical construction, i.e. he was not a divine immanence hidden deep in their soul but the Lord of the true story. The story itself began with Genesis, so the liberating God was recognized as God the Creator by the Jews. They were interested in the reality of this liberating God and Creator, and the realization and action of 'I am who I am' (Ex 3:14) as they were the chosen people. They listened to the words of the Lord, for them those words meant reality, i.e. the reality of events was represented by those words; there were the Ten Commandments, there was deliverance, there were victories, there was the promised land and through these deeds God proved his own reality. Later it was the endless and impatient expectation for the sign which resulted in decline because, after a certain era, Jewish religious thinking could accept only those things as divine facts which had been made legitimate by God by sending the signs. In the case of Abraham, according to the nice words by Apostle Paul, faith "was imputed to him for righteousness" (Rom 4:22). So in Jewish life, instead of the truth of the mind and its reality, the central question was the reality of God, and life was based on the faith in God. He who could not accept it was not regarded to be a member of the chosen people.

     Christianity and Greek science met after antecedents like these ones. The theology of the Early Church looked upon the Old Testament as an indispensable and organic part of the revelation. Thus, according to the Jewish and Christian approach, the teaching that God created the world out of nothing by its own will was a direct consequence of monotheism. It was in flat contradiction to the Greek way of thinking, so the problem of creatio ex nihilo soon came to the foreground in ideological fights. The term creatio ex nihilo was taken over from 2 Macc 7:28 and have been used since the middle of the 2nd century.7 In the general approach of Hellenistic philosophy, the world was not created by God; on the contrary, the world is the embodiment of God's mind, or, in other words, God's rationality. That is why we can and should try to understand it; to get hold of reality later on. In Hellenistic thinking, reality was solely determined in terms of the mind. They called reality what was understood by the mind and what could not be understood by the mind was not true. Once something was taken as true, it was regarded to be reality, too. Another problem in confronting Christianity was that thinking that way the Greeks created a certain kind of radical dualism between perceivable and understandable things.8 Established facts were identified with naturally and timelessly true ones while, at the same time, perceivable material things were degraded saying they were inadequate, even unworthy for rational consideration. There was no way for Christianity to accept this idea. The teaching about Christ's incarnation meant that created reality was completely different from God, thus the point in creating out of nothing was explained by God's investing the universe with immanent rationality of its own. As Christian teaching puts it, the rational forms of the universe which can be understood by the intellect are not of divine nature but contingent ones, 10 that is, they have risen to the level of reality on their own right and can now be approached by intellect. That puts the Greek dualistic approach to an end. Having equally been created out of nothing,8  material and form, inseparable from each other, met in a contingent type of order. It represents not only a uniform view of the world but also means that nature can be researched as the truth, discovered by the immanent human intellect, is in congruence with the laws of the material world. Form and material have become  features of one and the same world, i.e. the truth of the intellect and perception by the senses together represent the integrity of the universe created by God. Therefore it is not surprising that in the fight of Greek science and Christian theology it was Christianity that was condemned and charged with being an "impious" and "atheistic" teaching by the profane world. But most of the Christian philosophers argued saying that the gospel could not be proclaimed with the help of the dualistic way of thinking imbuing Greek culture. If it had been so, the teaching of the Church would have obtained a mythological structure and disappeared from the history of culture a long time ago. On the contrary, the Church bravely undertook the job of reforming the bases of the whole of Greek science which had far-reaching consequences in the formation of the European civilization.

     Although Christian theology professed and emphasized a uniform view of nature, i.e. the possibility of the correct approach to the contingent universe, this approach had to fight hard battles on the grounds of Western Christian thinking against the repeated attacks of the dualistic approach for over a thousand year. The most significant "battlefield" in those confrontations was the age of Galileo and Newton when, after the rise of the so-called "classical mechanism", true cultivation of science began. Interestingly enough, Newton and his followers revived the Christian and Jewish teaching of creation out of nothing, thus pushing research, the right way of scrutinizing nature, into the foreground of interest. It was a positive step forward. As far as the theory of classical mechanism is concerned, it is evident that the thinkers were unable to forget about the good old dualism which kept popping up like a subterranean river. 9 Though in different form, dualism was integrated into the structure of physics. Identifying infinite space with the omnipresence of God and infinite time with the eternity of God, Newton linked God with the universe in the concept of the absolute space and time. Thus space and time no more belonged to the world of senses, and, in a system like this, natural phenomena took place independently of space and time. This idea was made firmed up by Kant who raised space and time to the rank of an a priori category,2 claiming they could not be known as they could not be created by intellect, consequently, they could not be shaped by us. As contingency disappeared, the laws of nature formed an absolutely rigid and closed system. Everything could be described in advance using the cause-and-effect system. Truth coincided with reality again. What was discovered or accepted by the intellect could be regarded as absolute truth. It was the case until the middle of the 19th century in Europe.

     The situation began to change strikingly when, starting with the activities of Faraday and Maxwell, significant changes occurred in the basics of physical science. It was with them that the first shift from the dualistic towards the uniform approach was noted. Also, the restricted mechanistic approach opened up to be drifted towards relational thinking in an open structure. The changes also led from deterministic laws to a dynamic understanding of the continuous field. Einstein's genius is reflected by the fact that he agreed to the use of Maxwell's equations to exactly describe natural phenomena, thus the validity of the basic Newtonian laws has become relative. Our understanding about reality has also widened. Earlier, reality was something that could be characterized materialistically but, owing to Maxwell's work, continuous space equipped with force has also become physical reality.7,11 What was discovered  by the intellect in nature or as an integral part of nature, had to be regarded as something real which pointed at a different kind of approach. Maxwell preferred looking at the world being in union with its creator but having different realities for nature and God.

     Dualism, resembling a fetter earlier, disappeared from exact sciences in the first half of the 20th century which was characterized by the theory of relativity and the quantum theory alike. Einstein definitely supported the idea that the aim of scientific exploration was to grasp reality in its depth and understand things in their objective comprehensibility.9 That means intellectual work independent of perception. However, there is perception of which we cannot become completely independent, because, if nature itself is not inherently what we can learn about via the natural phenomena, then we do not really know nature.9,10 Many supported Einstein's idea but there were a lot who did not. The 'pro' evaluations described this support as the major epistemological revolution having ever taken place in the basic structure of physics.

     What could be interesting and relevant from a theological point of view for us was pointed out by Torrance in his evaluation of the theology of the 20th century, including the importance of Karl Barth's work in it. Exceptionally exciting facts have been revealed. Almost simultaneously with but independently of Einstein, Karl Barth came to similar conclusions in theology. Studying one of the central thesis of the Early Church and the period of Reformation according to which there was a union and reliable link between God and his revelation, Barth realized that the corner point of the Nicean Theology of the ancient Catholic Church was the debate about homoousion. The famous word 'homoousion' stands for the unity of the Father and the incarnate  Christ and, at the same time, it shows the relationship of God and the universe, too. Christian teaching underlines Christ's role here, because the love for the Father is found in Christ and will remain in him forever. The world has learned about this love through Christ; in other words, the universe meets the divine mind, Logos, in Him. That is why Torrance described Einstein's approach as the "homoousion of science”.9

     One can notice an unusual parallel here. Similarly to each other, Karl Barth and Albert Einstein said that empirical and theoretical components were inherently included in theological knowledge as well as the knowledge about nature. This idea came from the early Christians and Church Fathers, as Torrance reminded. As it was an established fact, Christian thinkers insisted upon the teaching that empirical and theoretical elements were automatically present within created reality. In other words, it is understood that the human intellect is identical with the created world and, at the same time, the divine Logos or the Word of God is identical with God himself. So, human intellect is able to learn about reality if it looks at both empirical and theoretical facts together. But it does not necessarily mean that this approach will help us to get a final knowledge about nature, and even faith cannot get final knowledge of God in his eternal being. That kind of thinking is consonant with Einstein’s description of the role of mathematics in describing reality: “as far as mathematical propositions refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain they do not refer to reality."11      In this situation Einstein points to a new mathematics for acquiring more knowledge and Barth, at the same time, refers to God’s grace which is able to open up new understanding through faith and give more knowledge of the Eternal God through Jesus Christ.

     It is worth quoting and finishing this article with another famous statement by Einstein. In Torrance's interesting interpretation, "In his statement that God does not play dice, he defends his conviction that there is an immanent, still open-structured order everywhere in this universe and we should be allowed to relate our knowledge to this order when we say the truth about reality."9

 

 

References

 

1. Nyíri, Tamás. A filozófiai gondolkodás fejlődése. (A Historic Development of Philosophy) Budapest: Szent István Társulat, (1977).

 2. Halasi-Nagy, József. A filozófia története. (History of Philosophy) Budapest: Pantheon, (1927).

 3. Sain, Márton. Nincs királyi út! – Matematikatörténet. (There Is No Royal Way! History of Mathematics) Budapest: Gondolat, (1986).

 4. Barrow, John D. A fizika világképe. (Worldview of Physics) Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, (1994).

 5.  Szabó, Árpád. “Hogyan lett a matematika deduktív tudománnyá?” (How does Mathematics Become Deductive Science?), KÖMAL Bolyai János Matematikai Társulat 8. 1-3 (1957)

6. Czeglédy, Sándor. Hit és történet. (Faith and History) Budapest: Sylvester, 1936.

7. Gaál, Botond. Creatio ex nihilo, In: A választott nép szolgálatában, Debrecen: DRTA., pub., (1989).

8. Torrance, Thomas F. Immortality and Light, London: Drew Lecture, Spurgeon's College, (1980).

9. Torrance, Thomas F. Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge,

Belfast: Boyd and Son Ltd., (1984).

10. Torrance, Thomas F. Divine and Contingent Order, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (1981).

11. Gaál, Botond. “Maxwell hitvallása és a tudomány forradalma” (Faith of Maxwell and the Revolution of Science), Debreceni Szemle 1 (1993).