Plato, Aristotle, and Christian Metaphysics
A recent book edited by Timothy M. Mosteller, Four Views on Christian Metaphysics, allows four different perspectives on which view of metaphysics is the most consistent with Christianity. In this volume, the Platonic view was defended by Paul M. Gould, the Aristotelian defended by Timothy L. Jacobs, the Idealist view by James S. Spiegel, and the Postmodern view by Sam Welbaum.
Of course the Bible is not a textbook on metaphysics, anymore than it contains a manual on survival tactics. But there is an obvious commonality between the subject matter of Scripture and that of this First Philosophy. They are each about the biggest things—one with an eye toward man’s chief end, the basic enemy of that end, and what God did to remedy our ultimate problem; while the other treats of the biggest circles around all things, yet in the abstract, as to principles of being and cause and mode and the like. As Gould said about basic metaphysical truths about God and the world,
“these truths are underdetermined in Scripture. In other words, while Scripture teaches, e.g., that God is almighty or wholly good, it is the job of the philosopher to precisely define these divine attributes. The same goes for the biblical teaching regarding the material world, humans, and divine action in the world.”1
Platonism and Christianity
Gould takes the Platonic view—sort of. He distinguishes between three basic kinds of Platonism: 1. Traditional Platonism, 2. Contemporary Platonism, and 3. Contemporary Christian Platonism. The first is "the Platonism of eternal forms, immortal souls, and diminution of the material world." The second is "centered on the problem of universals" and insists that "abstract objects exist." The third affirms the independence of the immaterial and intelligible, and that abstract objects exist, yet prioritizes God as totally independent and all else as totally dependent on Him, as well as the universe as "sacramental," pointing "beyond itself to the sacred order."2
Any form of Platonism will at least be committed to the necessity of “forms” or “essences” or “ideas” (which are real objects) that are immaterial, immutable, and eternal. For Plato, this meant a realm that exists above and beyond the changeable world of appearances. If there are instances of a “just war” and an “unjust law,” well then, there must be an immaterial, immutable, eternal form of Justice which simply is and to which all of the instances conform. Likewise with truth, beauty, oneness, goodness, wisdom, and so forth.
For Gould, Christian Platonism should entail a sacramental universe. More specifically this means a “participatory ontology” where,
“God and the world are ontologically distinct yet tightly bound together … The universe functions semiotically, as a sign that points beyond itself to a sacred order.” Such ontologies agree with ontological pluralists at least in that “things exist in various ways … [so] the relevant distinction isn’t between existence and being, but between existing in this way or that way.”3
To be even more specific, Gould distinguishes between the Theistic Activism (TA) of Thomas Morris and Christopher Menzel, and his own view, Modified Theistic Activism (MTA). Both agree that all that is outside of God is created by God. However, TA holds that all abstract objects are constituents of the divine mind; MTA holds that some abstract objects are created. Gould seems to care little whether one thinks of this as Plato's realm of the forms. There is great specificity in MTA, in that "concepts are identified with divine ideas and propositions with divine thoughts"4
Now he gives a basic task and method for metaphysics: namely, to “identify the fundamentals” and use criteria (diagnostics) “for what is fundamental.” On the latter of these he suggests two that are necessary: “completeness such that the fundamentals ‘cover’ the world without overlap or gap, as well as generality, such that the fundamentals ground all metaphysical possibilities.”5 So what are these fundamentals? He says, "God creates, in creating the world, three fundamental entities: substances, properties, and meanings (i.e., concepts and propositions)."6
I will explain why all this matters in a moment. One more piece of the puzzle first. The creation of these “fundamentals” occurs in “three logical moments.” How these correspond to the Big Bang and other cosmological models is less interesting here than how he correlates each moment to three kinds of objects: the first to possibilia, the second to abstracta, and the third to concreta. Utilizing the concept of "the bang," he summarizes that "there is one logical moment that is necessary (the middle bang), one that is spontaneous and free (the first bang), and one that is deliberate and free (the third bang)"7
Here is the punchline. It is in the first of these "where God dreams up creaturely possibilities" in the form of "concepts (and possible individuals) are divine ideas; propositions (and possible worlds) are divine thoughts."8 To prevent any suspense, the basic metaphysical question taken up in this whole book is the problem of universals. However there is quite a bit of space also devoted to the problem of mind-body interaction and other related issues of the soul.
Three objections are worth noting.
Obj.1. If concepts and propositions are abstract, God cannot have them, for then God’s thinking them would be an instance; and the abstract objects antecedent to Him.
This is resolved in the truth that God does not know all things outside of Himself because of the thing known, but rather the thing known is the case because of what He both knows and causes in it. Gould answers this his way on page 13, but the summary by Turretin under the mode of omniscience in Institutes, Vol.1. should also be considered.
Obj.2. “Spiegel asks, ‘Why suppose some abstract objects outside of God? What explanatory purpose do they serve that divine ideas cannot?”9
Gould challenges both that Idealism is more explanatory and more parsimonious. To the first, Gould doubts that divine ideas could be more explanatory since, as he argued, "ideas mediate between mind and world, they do not play the structure-making role.”10 To the second, he divides between ontological parsimony and ideological parsimony: confessing that while it is simpler to have "one less kind of thing on its ontological list," still, it begs the question: "Why then do divine ideas play the role of structure making?"11 and from there divides further anticipated answers begging more questions.
Obj.3. Jacobs objects: “Platonism employs a ‘top-down approach that says universals are self-subsisting abstract objects and individuals are secondary participants.”12
Gould leans on Gerson's Aristotle and Other Platonists to argue that there was substantial agreement about a top-down approach, at least in "that the universe has a systematic unity, this systematic unity is hierarchical, and that the divine and intelligible realm is a fundamental, irreducible, and necessary category for the universe." And as to individuals being an afterthought, he reminds about his view: "substances are fundamental wholes and property instances are non-separable parts of these fundamental wholes (and properties are metaphysical parts of properties instances).”13
Aristotelianism and Christianity
For a good treatment of where Aristotle breaks ranks from his master at the Academy, I would recommend G.E.R. Lloyd’s Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His Thought, where it is said to be boiled down to two problems: 1. How do the Forms cause our world of appearances? 2. You’ve moved the problem of the one and the many “upstairs,” but not really solved it. This should not be misunderstood. When compared to a modernist or postmodernist, Plato and Aristotle would have been at one on the question of whether truth is objective—whether the form of things as they are reside “outside,” in the sense of “above and beyond” us.
What then, for Aristotle, is the difference between forms and universals? For him, "The difference between a form and a universal is that a universal is a similarity between forms."14 So the difference involves what it is, but also how one arrives at it. Anyone familiar with Aristotle on a 101 level, knows the basic maxim that a form is never without its matter. That naturally raises the question as to how Aristotle was not simply a nominalist. If the “way that a thing is” (whether subject or predicate) is always “in” the subject—in the individual thing in the world—in what sense do we mean the same thing by the “redness” of a tomato and the “redness” of the coffee mug in front of me?
There is a lot of grammar to learn in understanding Aristotle, but it is all very simple. The best place to start is with his Categories. There were ten of them. The first is the substance. That means simply a single thing. All of the other nine are what is “accidental” to a substance. Now “since a substance is an individual subject, the predicables describe its qualities or forms. A species (secondary substance, definition, or nature) is a genus plus a difference."15
Now Jacobs gets some help from Porphyry to set up why this will matter to universals. He continues:
"As universals are similarities with differences subtracted, species is a universal essence with individuation subtracted. For example, Human nature (species) is the rational (difference) animal (genus). A genus is a universal with the "difference" subtracted, and is like a more inclusive universal or category.”16
To complete the picture, Jacobs continues, after imagination receives forms in their particularity and not in a physical way (i.e. the red of an apple perceived doesn’t make the mind red) and after phantasms reside in the brain, “Some action besides imagination is needed to abstract similarities from phantasms and leave behind differences. Abstraction is the job of the intellect, and that power is called active intellect, or agent intellect. Just as memory stores phantasms, the intellect also stores abstracted universals in the potential intellect or passive intellect ... When the universal is removed from particularity, it is entirely immaterial in understanding.”17
For anyone who is basically classical in orientation, but struggling between Gould and Jacobs, it may help to know that Gould rejects Jacobs’ view largely because it rests on divine simplicity as the backing for the contingency of all existence-essence composites. Specifically Gould writes,
"I endorse divine aseity. It should be no surprise then that I reject the part-priority principle when it comes to substances. For substances, including the divine substance, God is a fundamental unity of parts, properties, and powers. God's parts and properties are metaphysically dependent on God and not vice-versa (metaphysical dependency is not causal or counterfactual dependency). Rather, as a fundamental whole, God's parts (say, his ideas and thoughts) and his properties (the property of being omnipotent, being omniscient, etc.) exist as constituents in God and are either caused (in the case of ideas and thoughts) or uncaused (in the case of God's essential properties)."18
Of course, anyone who has read James Dolezal’s God Without Parts or All That is in God is familiar with arguments that rest divine simplicity on attributes that are taught in Scripture. Moreover, the reference to divine attributes as “properties” is taken on by Ed Feser in Five Proofs of God’s Existence.
Let us consider five objections that were brought to Jacobs about the Aristotelian view.
Obj.1. Since Aristotle’s hylomorphism cannot conceive of the form existing apart from its matter, this excludes the soul persisting after death. It is at least not the same “Paul” on this view.19
That is a true criticism of Aristotle, and one which he may not have minded. However, as Jacobs points out, "Aquinas develops Aristotle's claim that intellect is immaterial and impassible to demonstrate the immortality of the soul."20 And he cites De Anima, 414a20, 408a27, 429b5, as those sections that Thomas made his advancements from. Now as to the Platonic critique of hylomorphism of any stripe, Jacobs replies that things are actually reversed: "If the self is the whole soul-body composite, it loses identity when separated. This is why Platonism says only the soul is the self. Rather, it is Platonism that has the identity problem because substance dualism has no unity."21
Obj.2. Additionally, “how does this view not suffer the same interaction problem as Platonist and Cartesian substance dualism?”22
Jacobs says that hylomorphism denies such problems because it denies such dualism to begin with. That may be, but it is not clear that he has refuted the point, which is that one still has to account for the interaction, even if the "two" are really one, as the soul is the form of the body.
Obj.3. If “one and the same universal is multiply located at different places at the same time,” or, if universals are simply “real similarities in things with differences subtracted,” then how exactly does MR avoid entailing nominalism?23
Jacobs replies, first, that the same universals multiply located, etc., "is only a problem if universals are things, as in Platonism. Gould is wrong that in Aristotelianism 'universals only exist in minds but not literally 'in' things,' ... A universal exists in the mind as universal and in things as particular.24 Jacobs also clarifies the nominalist charge by a simple comparison between Ockham and Aristotle on this point: "Ockham sees universals as created names only referring to individuals. Aristotle sees them as real discovered predicates explicitly not referring to individuals."25
Obj.4. “Even the notion of ‘similarity’ between things presupposes a pre-perceptual understanding of what counts as a similarity, which is itself knowledge of a universal truth.”26
The example that Spiegel uses to make this point (our knowledge of perfection) actually works the other way, Jacobs says: "Perfection is learned empirically and often by via negativa."27
Obj.5. The notion of prime matter is “either explanatorily redundant or else unintelligible.”28
Jacobs responds that though this "is not an easy matter to understand," we can at least rule out that prime matter means something like "mass or raw material," but rather something like "'the matter at hand,' 'What's the matter?' or 'the subject at hand.' Some Thomists replace 'prime matter' with 'first subject,' to avoid confusion."29 It turns out (at least in Jacobs' description) to be nothing but a placeholder, a sort of logical distinction.
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1. Paul Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Platonism,” in Timothy M. Mosteller, ed., Four Views on Christian Metaphysics (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2022), 5.
2. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Platonism,” 1, 2.
3. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Platonism,” 3.
4. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Platonism,” 4.
5. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Platonism,” 7.
6. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Platonism,” 9.
7. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Platonism,” 10.
8. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Platonism,” 9.
9. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Platonism,” 24.
10. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Platonism,” 25.
11. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Platonism,” 26.
12. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Platonism,” 27.
13. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Platonism,” 27.
14. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 38.
15. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 43.
16. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 43.
17. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 47-48.
18. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 54-55.
19. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 57.
20. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 45.
21. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 66.
22. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 60.
23. Gould, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 56.
24. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 64.
25. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 63.
26. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 59.
27. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 64.
28. Spiegel, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 59.
29. Jacobs, “Christian Metaphysics and Aristotelianism,” 62.
