Natural Theology: The Existence of God

Change occurs. This is self-evident when we consider if such a proposition is true, then conclude that it is. Further, it is empirically validated by stepping outside and observing everything around you. If change occurs, then we must ask what is change? Change is the actualization of a potential. Since everything in our experience changes in some respect, everything in our experience is a combination of act and potency. A ball has the potential to roll, now it’s actually rolling; a boy has the potential to grow muscle, now he actually has muscle; a mirror has the potential to reflect my image, now it actually reflects my image. So, change exists, and the definition of change is the actualization of a potential.

For something to go from potential to actual, some other thing already actual must bring the something in question to actuality; this is known as the principle of causality. The idea that something potential could bring itself to act - pulling itself up by its metaphysical bootstraps - is necessarily impossible. An example showing this impossibility would be the incoherent statement, “I actualized my own existence”. If I caused (i.e., actualized) my own existence, that implies I existed before I caused my own existence since for me to cause my own existence presuppose I already exist, thus making a self-contradicting claim.

So, change exists; change is the actualization of a potential; and for something potential to be actual requires a cause (i.e. something actual). Now, there are two applications of the principle of causality in reality: one deals with a temporal, static line of events (a linear casual series) that traces causes back in time, without any need for the series to terminate in some fundamental, first cause; the second kind deals with any given moment in time, particularly the very present moment (a hierarchical causal series) that involves causal power being derived from some fundamental member, the primordial source of a given causal power. An example of a linear causal series is a father who begets a son, and that son, in turn, begets his own son, and so on. This series could theoretically go on to infinity; taken at face value, there is nothing in this example that necessitates a first, most fundamental cause through which all the other members in the series rely upon in order to actualize their potency. In the example used, the first son requires nothing from his father to beget his own son once the first son is begotten; after the first son is begotten the father is irrelevant to the son continuing to exist and using his own causal powers (i.e. actualities) to actualize the potential life of his own son.

The metaphysics is different in a hierarchical causal series. In a hierarchical causal series, a first cause is necessary for the other, secondary members of the series to have any causal efficacy because derivativeness is the key factor in how a secondary cause can have causal power at all. Consequently, a hierarchical causal series is not concerned with the past in explaining how a potency is actualized, but how any potency is actualized at any moment, including here and now, given the secondary cause must derive its actualization from a first cause. I will provide three examples of a hierarchical causal series:

1. A stone’s potency to roll is actualized by a stick pushing it; however, the stick can only actualize this potency insofar as a moving hand actualizes the stick’s potency to move.

Orthodoxy and Hipsterdoxy

In contemporary Orthodoxy, we often hear a theological metanarrative that divides “Eastern” (i.e., Orthodoxy) and “Western” (i.e., Catholicism and Protestantism) Christianity into two halves that clash at their theological cores, or, as one author puts it, their “phronemas”. While prevalent in contemporary, popular-level writings, this metanarrative likely has its conception from Orthodox theologians and academics of the 19^th century and took full-root in the 20^th century. Exponents of this metanarrative reduce Western theology to a vaguely defined “rationalist”, “legalistic”, “Augustinian” framework, while defining Eastern theology as mystical, experiential, and giving primacy to the Greek fathers, particularly the Cappadocians.

It is a metanarrative because it provides an overarching explanation of what enables any theological disagreement between Orthodoxy and the West; thus, it is more fundamental to any specific doctrinal disagreement. It is a metanarrative because it walks the reader through the diverging theological developments of Church history between Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism. Euphemistically, I will refer to this metanarrative as hipsterdoxy. I call it hipsterdoxy because it comes from within Orthodoxy and seeks to differentiate Orthodoxy from the perceived theological mainstream of the West, ostensibly for the sake of being different. It is my aim to show this metanarrative is erroneous. I will do this with a short elaboration of the metanarrative and then address five theological doctrines often used to justify it. My hope is the reader will see, to quote Marcus Plested in his Orthodox Readings of Aquinas, “the Christian East is not quite as ‘Eastern’, nor the West as ‘Western’, as is generally assumed”.