The Metaphysics of Faith

Part 5, Losing the Analogy

You’ve endured quite a few posts filled with history and theology. You might be getting impatient, wondering if any of this matters. So, let me start pointing out some implications.

I’ve argued that the Neoplatonic influence on Biblical faith has been generative. In the last few posts I’ve pointed to some of those theological fruits. Let me unpack one of those fruits and the impact of its loss on modern faith.

The issue is God’s transcendence. To be sure, Jewish monotheism policed the ontological boundary between creature and Creator. But in its encounter with Neoplatonic metaphysics, Christian reflection upon God’s transcendence was mystically explored and theologically deepened.

One of the fruits of these reflections was the articulation of what is called “the analogy of being,” the analogia entis. This something I’ve talked about a lot over the last few years, but a quick recap.

Simply put, God exists differently than how we exist. We can assert that God exists but we should never imagine that God exists like objects in the universe exist. The reason, again, has to do with a participatory metaphysics. God, as Existence Itself, imparts existence. Consequently, however God “exists” isn’t the same as how we creatures exist. Thus, we can only speak of God’s “existence” analogically. There is something similar to how God exists and we exist, but there is also a radical dissimilarity as well. Given God’s transcendence, whenever we speak of God’s existence we must use “the analogy of being,” how God exists but exists differently.

Now, why should any of this metaphysical speculation matter? Recall how, at the start of this series, I described how “Scripture alone” folks are going to think all this Neoplatonic mumbo jumbo is unnecessarily philosophical and extra-biblical. In this view, the first four posts in this series were a massive waste of time.

And yet, skepticism and unbelief are on the rise. People are nonverting from their churches. Parents are struggling to impart the faith to their children. Why? What’s going on? The words of the Bible haven’t changed. People still know how to read. But quoting the Bible over and over isn’t moving the needle. So what’s changed?

What’s changed are those background assumptions, many of them metaphysical. The analogy of being, for example. Most of my college students imagine God as an object that exists in the universe. A big, powerful object, but an object nonetheless. As moderns, my students don’t assume a participatory metaphysics. Their default imagination is that the universe is full of objects governed by the laws of physics. They are not thinking of God’s existence analogically, but literally. God exists exactly like a chair exists. Thus, many of these students are persuaded by the argument that, since science cannot “find” God in the universe, then science has proven that God doesn’t exist. Or they become convinced that belief in God is committed to “God of the gaps” arguments. Or that faith can be breezily relegated to “I have no need of that hypothesis” irrelevancy.

Notice in all this how unbelief is being driven by metaphysical assumptions and not biblical illiteracy. To go back to the metaphor from my first post, the glitch is happening off the page of Scripture, in the background code. The default metaphysical assumptions of modernity, assumptions my students don’t even recognize they’ve adopted, are destabilizing their faith.

All that to say, to all those “Bible alone” Protestants out there, if you ignore the metaphysical loss we’ve undergone in modernity you’ll fail to appreciate how the Bible is being read in very different soil from where it first was planted and flourished. You’ll be thumping your Bible harder and harder to lesser and lesser effect.

And listen, to “Bible alone” readers, I sympathize. I know you’re sad in having to talk about things like “the analogy of being.” I’m aware that the words analogia entis are not found on the pages of Scripture. But if you’re raising your kids to believe that God exists like a chair--and I know you are because I teach your children--well, you’re going to reap what you sow.