In this fifth part of my lecture on natural theology, my goal is to cover the views of Plato and Aristotle. As for the remaining five beginning with Thomas Aquinas, I think I cannot include them now due to the limitation of time and the difficulty of the material.

The Natural Theology of Plato

Van Til introduces Plato's natural theology with a distinction between two worlds: "the world of being" and "the world non-being" (p. 284). The distinction between these two worlds is that the first is "wholly known" while the second is "wholly unknown" (ibid.). On this basis, Van Til argues that in Plato's mind "any being that is really to exist must be eternal and changeless" (ibid). Such a theory of being is closely connected to Plato's theory of knowledge. Again, on this basis, knowledge that is real must be changeless and comprehensive.

Understanding the difference between the identified two worlds above is crucial to seeing the role of the world of phenomena. This third world stands in between the first two worlds. As humans, we don't see the real world of being, only the being in the intermediate world of phenomena, that is, a "tension between pure being and pure non-being" (ibid.). The learning process, which deals with knowledge also follows from such a perspective. Our claim to knowledge also constitutes a "tension between pure omniscience and pure ignorance" (ibid.).

What I find confusing in Plato's concept of natural theology is the role of human intellect. He does not trust human senses for they deceive us, but he relies on human intellect to know the true being. He differentiates between the learning process that is trapped in the tension between two worlds and the power of the intellect to attain knowledge of being due to its divine character. The reason why I find it confusing is because it is exactly the human intellect that is primarily involved in the learning process.

Though I still don't see the connection of the above discussion to natural theology, Van Til immediately shifts his claim that for Plato, nature too is revelational, though not in the sense of the Westminster Standards. Nature is revelational both to man and God.

Shifting to the third sentence of the fourth paragraph, Van Til lost me again. I can't see the connection of his explanation. The only thing I understand is that for Plato, says van Til, both God and man are confronted with this world of non-being and therefore both "are wholly unknown to themselves" (p. 285) and at the same time, both are wholly known.

Van Til concludes that the natural theology of Plato is "nothing more than man's rational efforts to impose abstract rational unity upon the world of non-being" (ibid.). The same thing can be said about supernatural revelation, that is, it is a product of man's rationality to something "that has not yet been finished" or "can never be finished" (ibid.). For Van Til, to use Plato's natural theology as a basis for Christianity is to be involved in a futile enterprise.

The Natural Theology of Aristotle

As for Aristotle's view of natural theology, as I did with van Til's exposition of Plato's view, I skipped ideas that I didn't understand and stuck only to his expositions that were clear to me.

After saying that Aristotle opposed Plato's insistence on searching "for rationality as a principle beyond the things we see" and argued that "universals are to be found within particulars," Van Til describes the former's philosophy as focusing on "the correlativity of abstract rationality and pure Chance" (pp. 285-286).

In the next two paragraphs, Van Til wrote statements that I think many in the academe will find shocking and offensive. Examples of these statements include the following:

. . . the God of Aristotle is very difficult to handle (p. 286).

. . . Aristotle never escaped from simple polytheism (p. 287).

Van Til says that when we speak of God in positive terms, we can only speak of him metaphorically, and then he adds shocking statements, that to him are the logical consequences of Aristotle's philosophy:

God did not really create the world. He does not really control the world. He does not even really know the world (ibid.).

And then he concludes with the last two sentences that are even more shocking:

Aristotle’s natural theology is but the precursor of modern phenomenalism. And the polytheism of post-Kantian anti-intellectualism is but the great-grandchild of the polytheism of Aristotle’s intellectualism.

I am not sure if Van Til's assessment of both Plato and Aristotle's natural theology is accurate. I just simply trust that he knows what he's saying.

Reference:

Nature and Scripture by Cornelius Van Til from The Infallible Word, 1946. Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.