How Philosophy Points to Christianity
I have often wondered whether the Christian response to the difficulties of life — the resurrection, the afterlife, the treatment of an inherited spiritual disease through the allowance of suffering, etc. — is a complication of classical theism or a consequence thereof.1 As the years have gone by, the more it seems right to think that Christianity is what is likely given the existence of God. I cannot defend this claim fully, but a brief sketch with an accompanying reflection, I think, would be appropriate. Given that it’s Easter.
Good philosophy of God tells us this much: God is subsistent goodness, just as God is subsistent being. Now, we might think that God, being the fullness of goodness, has nothing further to desire, no further perfection to attain. So, why would God bother to create? Simply put, there are two ways to love one’s goodness. The first is to enjoy it; the second is to share it. This latter option, as so many in the tradition have told us, must be God’s motive to create: a sheer act of loving gratuity.
However, for God to share his goodness in the most meaningful way requires bringing about not just material realities but spiritual realities. Why so? Because there must be beings capable of conscious awareness, beings that can reflect upon creation and be grateful for it. We might even think that, given the goodness of God, God would not just share his goodness by bringing other things into existence, but go further in uniting all creation to himself. This makes sense: God would share the most goodness possible and there is no greater goodness to share than God Himself.
But again, there’s a difficulty. Only beings with intellect and will, which can choose to love (or not to love) God are capable of communing with the Godhead. How can God pull all creation, suffused with so many unconscious entities, into union with Himself?
Solution? God creates spiritual-material realities, that is, beings like us, that serve as a microcosm within the microcosm. Then, by inviting beings like us into friendships communion, God pulls all creation along for the ride, as it were. We, then, are the pinnacle of creation, the concentration point of the entire cosmos, having gathered within ourselves the entire spread of creation, sharing elements in common with rocks and plants and animals and angels.
Next move. How best for God to unite us to himself, to affect this loving relationship? Perhaps by God assuming human nature, by condescending — by incarnating. That God becomes man so that man might become (= share in the life of) God. This is why many theologians have thought the incarnation would have occurred even if the fall hadn’t, since the incarnation appears the most befitting way to affect union between man and the divine.
But the fall, we take it, did occur. Moral musculation happened, and perhaps this was probabilistically (though not logically) inevitable. Either way, the incarnation was then able to serve another more redemptive role — and here we are at Easter.
The point of this thought experiment is simple. God’s motive is love — all creation is an act of love. We threw a wrench into the system with sin, but God’s aim was not ultimately to be thwarted. The incarnation occurred and subsequently the atonement. This story — the story of Christianity — makes good philosophical sense. And because there is good historical data to support it, I choose to believe it. Nothing else compares. Christianity is the greatest story ever told and may in fact be proof — as one young man recently remarked — that some things are too good not to be true.
The reason this matters is, if thinking in terms of theory comparison, consequences would not lessen the intrinsic probability of the classical theistic theory, whereas complications would.