The Confutation Of Metaphysical Naturalism

Objection: Most of the concepts on the trinity are extrabiblical and derived from the nicene creeds. 

 

That’s just a conspiracy theory.  

Since I find the Nicene Creed to be monarchical & disagree, it’s doubtful that my belief in the Trinity is derived from the Nicene Creed.

Rather, the choice the Bible offers is between modalism & trinitarianism, & since the created order testifies to the existence of God’s INVISIBLE attributes & authority & displays simultaneous unity & diversity in equal measure, modalism lacks the explanatory value of trinitarianism.  For example numbers are infinitely perichoretic.  If modalism obtains, the image of God tilts toward unity more than diversity which, as to whole numbers means that the fractional integers that make any set of whole numbers perfectly perichoretic don’t exist — yet they do. 

Objection: This outside of space and time, uncaused caused, without body, parts, or passions. Not found in the bible>

Not according to Romans 1:18 - 32.  That’s a pagan concept that seeks to suppress the truth about God’s INVISIBLE attributes by reasoning from the created order.  If your cause is as just as you allege it to be, then you’re going to demonstrate that God is caused, has a body, is divisible, & lacks infinite self-control **without grounding your theology & philosophy in the visible attributes of the created order.**

The concept that God occupies physical space infers that properties like space & time are part of God’s attributes.   That’s a classic example of looking to the created order to do theology, philosophy,& ethics in order to diminish & suppress God’s INVISIBLE attributes by substituting the VISIBLE attributes of the created order then reasoning about God accordingly. 

The Bible, correctly understood teaches us how to reason soundly.  It doesn’t prohibit the use of the created order as a stepping stone from which we can deduce that God exists & what God is like or might be like.  That said, it prohibits us from using the VISIBLE attributes of the created order to properly warrant our theology, philosophy, & ethics.

For example, “Space & time are properties of the created order - therefore God’s attributes include these properties.”

That can’t be true.  Why? 

 

Because Romans 1:18 - 32, when correctly understood teaches us that God’s attributes are INVISIBLE not VISIBLE, & space-time is a mathematically VISIBLE phenomenon.   

The text prohibits us from reasoning & epistemically warranting our theology, philosophy, & ethics from the visible attributes of the created order. 

The text is morals tested to ensure we get the message. 

What is the purpose of the created order according to Romans 1:20?   

• To testify to the existence, INVISIBLE attributes of God, & to God’s authority. 

Why is God’s wrath revealed from heaven?  

• Because people have (since the Fall) been deliberately suppressing the truth about God’s existence, INVISIBLE attributes, & authority by way of substituting the VISIBLE attributes of the created order, especially those of people & animals. 

How did people in the ancient world wind up with idols that looked like people & animals?  

• They looked to the created order & used its VISIBLE attributes as the basis of their theology, philosophy, & ethics.  

What sort of theology, philosophy, & ethics?  

• According to the text of Romans 1, worship & worship ethics, sexual ethics, & justice in general. 

How so?  

• Rather than look to God (who has no sex, no race, no gender, no sexuality, &tc) they deliberately & willfully looked to the created order & reasoned accordingly.

How then can it be that “natural” means “heterosexual/heteronormative” & “unnatural” means “homosexual,” in Romans 1:26 - 27?

• According to the grammar & syntax of Romans 1:18 - 32, it can’t.   

How so? 

• The only way to do that is to suppress the truth about God’s INVISIBLE attributes (which do not include sex, gender, & sexuality) & substitute the VISIBLE attributes of the created order in order to do ethical reasoning in general & sexual ethics in particular. 

The text is telling us something about how prejudice & bigotry operate.  

How so? 

• When you use the visible attributes of the created order to do ethical reasoning, justice itself is deeply affected.  

• This has multiple applications. 

• Natural = Male Dominance/Hegemony + 
• Unnatural = Egalitarianism 

= Misogyny 

• Natural = White/Caucasian + 

Unnatural = Anything else 

= Racism

• Natural = Heteronormative +

Unnatural = Homosexual 

= Homophobia 

• Natural = Non-Jewish +

Unnatural = Jewish 

= Anti-Semitism

As you can see —  by looking to the created order’s attributes instead of God Himself & His attributes, the end result is a perversion of justice in relation to both God & everyone & by everything else.   

One of God’s attributes is justice.  Reasoning & epistemic warranting of theology, philosophy, & ethics winds up perverting justice every time.  It’s no different than loving yourself first before God & then everyone else.  

There are 2 ways to talk about God in relation to space & time. 

In Christian Theology, at the popular level, we sometimes say that God is in here with us right now.    That’s shorthand for, “God is omnipresent without being part of the physical universe.

By way of contrast, in Process Theologies, to take just one example, God is viewed as inside space & time and as such God’s attributes include space & time as actual properties.  On that view, since space & time are mathematically discerned, God is reducible in part or in hole to a mathematical formula.  

What evidence, if any, can you adduce that shows us one or more mathematical formulae that = God or don’t cash out at the same place Village Atheists sometimes do by way of fideistic belief in metaphysical naturalism — “I know I can’t prove it but one day, ‘You’ll see!” 

One of the major points of Romans 1:18 - 32 is that God’s attributes are wholly invisible, not just partly or somewhat invisible. 

Therefore, if you think that God exists inside space & time & that God these properties are also among God’s attributes, then you need to prove that from the Bible without epistemically warranting your hermeneutical conclusions in a manner that runs through using the visible attributes of the created order as a sufficient warrant to underwrite your ideas & in a manner that doesn’t predicate the visible/mathematical  properties of space - time to God’s essence & attributes.  

This Is the Way! O LORD, Hear our prayers!