Rooted in the Absolute

"The infinite and personal God, the one who made the physical realm, is also responsible for the world's intelligibility and the unfolding of historical events. As a result, the classical Christian position on truth, knowledge, and history differs significantly from the relativistic spirit so common in today's world. The Christian worldview is rooted in absolute truth." (1)

Throughout our study of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, we have continued to compare and contrast their views with that of biblical Christianity. The focus of our compare -and -contrast study has been Plato's philosophy. Since our semester comes to a close next week, yesterday's class consisted of reviewing and summarizing our observations.

We acknowledge that all truth is God's truth, and we do see several things in Plato's view of reality that we can agree with. One of those things is that he claimed that truth is absolute. His doctrine ,or theory, of the Forms conveys an absolute, eternal, immutable, perfect spiritual realm that is in opposition with the temporal, imperfect and ever-changing physical world of matter. Even as believers in our postmodern world, we see that the shadow of Plato's dualism often creeps into our thinking. We are tempted to divide our lives into the sacred and secular, separating our Sundy -morning- God from the rest of our week, the rest of our lives. Plato's most famous pupil does not hold to this dualism.

In the later life of Aristotle, we see a departure from the teachings of his mentor. In fact, we see an outright rejection of the world of the Forms. Unlike Plato, he views the physical world of matter as very good. This world is the arena for experimentation and exploration ; Aristotle is a classifier by nature with a love of what is now known as biology and zoology. As to the spiritual realm, he does not hold a complete reversal of Plato's views and, therefore, consider it evil, but his focus is on the physical world. Aristotle sees 'God' as the Unmoved Mover, an eternal being, a First Cause. Applications of Aristotles' philosophy can tend toward humanism.

The students have been asked to explain and discuss some of the things they have learned in this study with their parents. I'm excited to hear about the results!

(1) Kenneth Richard Samples, A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2007), 74.