God and The Universe

The more I've thought about the issues I first discussed in Semi-Arianism and the Second Ecumenical Council the more I've come to think that the Homoousion controversy became a distraction from the actual point of the Arian Heresy.  But that's not me saying Homoousionism is wrong, per se.

So first we need to ask the question of why even did the full Arians (and even many Semi-Arians) object to the Homoousion formula so strongly?  It was not relevant to Arius's original explanation of his Theology at all.  And Arians did believe Jesus was the Son of God.  Aren't most children made from the Substance of their parents?

It's because of how by this time the Pythagorean and Platonic understanding of The Divine had influenced all schools of thought in the Greco-Roman world.  To them no Created Being could be described as being of the same Substance as the True Original God.  The Demiurge of Timaeus could be considered in some sense Homousian with the matter it was merely rearranging, but even the Demiurge was not Homousian with the True God (at least during this later post Numenius of Apamea period of Platonism and Pythagoreanism).  And the Arians were essentially Platonists who identified The Logos/Jesus with the Demiurge not the ultimate Supreme Being.  However what the Arians and Athanasians and Trinitarians who were iffy on Homoousianism like Eusebius of Caesarea all agreed on was that Creation itself is not Homousian with The Father.

I am making this post to suggest that this assumption everyone at Nicaea agreed on is actually something that The Bible maybe doesn't agree with.

I know that many Christians are used to thinking God must be completely outside The Universe in order to be it's Creator.  But if you know what you're doing, you can construct a circular wall in such a way that you are within it when you are done making it.  And maybe the Substance of God is Infinite enough that He could create the Universe from His own Substance without lessening Himself at all?

When The Bible says that The Heavens are His Throne and The Earth His Footstool, that imagery tells me He's within The Universe not outside of it.  Remember both the Ancient Hebrew and Greek words for "Heaven" at their core just meant The Sky and what we would call Outer Space.  I already made a post arguing that the Light that lightened the Universe before the Sun, Moon and Stars were created was the same Light that Jesus is identified with.  And then there is the fact that Adam became a Living Soul when God Breathed Life into him.  Breath in that verse is also a word for Spirit.  To me that is pretty strong support for at least our Spirits and/or Souls being homousian with The Holy Spirit.

InspiringPhilosophy in his video on Panentheism said there is supposed to be a strong distinction between Creator and Creation, but the only verse he cited was what Paul said in Romans 1.  First of all that verse was only about what we're supposed to Worship and nothing else.  And also Romans 1:18-32 is Paul quoting the beliefs of the Platonic Hellenized Jews of Rome he spent the rest of the Epistle refuting.  In Romans 11 Paul tells us what God is doing in grafting Gentiles into Israel is "Para phusis" thus utterly destroying the world view of Romans 1 where being "Para Phusis" is presented as inherently evil.

Materialism is often assumed to be inherently Atheistic.  However the Theology of the Ancient Stoics was a Materialist Monotheism.  (IP for some reason defined Soticism completely wrong in the Panentheism video), and so was the Theology of Dutch Jewish Philosopher Spinoza.

God being in The Universe doesn't mean He would be in it in a way that our currently limited ablity to perceive it could detect.  We now know there are at least 10 dimensions but we live in or perceive only 4 of them, the 3 spatial dimensions and time.  "Dark matter" is just a term for matter scientists are pretty sure exists but we are not currently capable of detecting with any of our 5 senses, and it's estimated to make up 85% of all matter.  The 6 colors our eyes can see are only a small piece of the Electromagnetic Spectrum, and it's the same with the other senses.

In other words No I'm not arguing that God and His Angels simply live on a Planet orbiting Polaris that we could fly a space ship to.

[Update November: See this post which is kind of a follow up.]

[The below digression into Stoicism I am more iffy on now, I don't want to erase it, it should have maybe always been a separate post.]

Stoicism is often described as being Pantheistic, like on Wikipedia.  But Stoic theology is not at all like what anyone in a modern post New Age movement world is likely to think of when they think of Pantheism, (nor is it like the "Blood and Soil" Pantheism of the Nazis).  There is no Sapient Mother Earth or anything like that.  Rather their view had a strong distinction between Passive Matter and Active Matter.  The Passive Matter was the material world as we perceive it while the Active Matter was God.

I know some readers might be calling me a Hypocrite now, so often using associations with Pythagoras and Plato as inherently Derogatory but suddenly different school of Secular Greek Philosophy actually is similar to me Theology.

The Bible says you'll know them by their Fruits.  I have come to despise Pythagorean and Platonic influences on Christianity because I've looked at 2000 years of Church History and seen them as the root of almost everything The Church has gone wrong on.  Stoicism as a mainstream school of Philosophy died with Marcus Aurelius (who did NOT Persecute Christians, the persecutions that happened during his reign were the result of Alexander The False Prophet), when the Church was still only starting to flirt with Greek Philosophy. 

Based on Revelation 21:24 I think all of the Secular cultures of the world have something to contribute to The Tabernacle of New Jerusalem.  Much of what I've been doing as a Christian Otaku is trying to find what we can learn from a certain Japanese Sub Culture.  And I think even Plato has some value if we stick to the early dialogues before the Pythagorean influence started, like Symposium.  But we need to do so applying Scriptural Discernment.

I'm by no means suggesting we Canonize Stoic Philosophers as Prophets the way David Bentley Hart seems to wish he could replace The Old Testament with Plato.  Like all Philosophers they were people throwing's ideas around.  And I do want to distinguish the early Hellenistic Stoics who shared the Pre-Plato Athenian attitude to Same Sex Love from the later Roman Stoics like Musonius Rufus who were influenced by Roman Pythagoreanism and thus adopted the Para Phusis Sexual Morality of The Laws.

Zeno of Citium who founded the Stoic School was born on Cyprus and was referred to as being ethnically Phoenician.  Phoenician is a Greek term we tend to think of as equivalent to the Biblical Canaanites or Sidonians and geographically with modern Lebanon.  But I think there is good evidence that the Ancient Greeks sometimes included Ancient Israelites with the Phoenicians.  The Tribes of Asher, Naphtali and Dan particularly had associations with parts Lebanon and the Sidonians.  I also think many Judahites may have fled to Cyrpus during the Babylonian conquest, or wound up there with the Egyptians who came there under Amasis since we know from Jeremiah some Judahites fled to Egypt a little before then.

But even if Zeno was a purely Gentile Phoenician, it was their Idolatry and Polytheism and certain Customs The Bible repeatedly condemns.  They may well have had a similar view to The Israelites on the basics of how the Divine and Material world relate.  In fact that's the whole premise of Michael Heiser's career, arguing that the we can understand The Hebrew Bible's cosmology better by understanding what the Pagan Canaanites believed.

Stoic Theology viewed God as Invisible but Immanent.  They also pictured God as in a sense a Fire, which is very Biblical, YHWH is a Consuming Fire and His Breath like Brimstone, which is why I've argued the Lake of Fire is the Baptism of The Holy Spirit.  They also had a similar teaching to The Bible about God ordering and maintaining The Cosmos.  And they even said that only God is Good.

They had some ideas about "Fate" you could take out of context.  However they had a nuanced view of Free Will versus Divine Predestination similar to how Josephus described the Pharisees placing them between the extremes of the Essenes and Sadducees on that issue.  They were neither Calvinist or Arminian, but that's an issue I may discus more in a future post.

Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish Philosopher of the 17th Century who was similarly accused of being a Pantheist even though he insisted he wasn't, simply for rejecting the Pythagorean dualism of Mainstream Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.  Spinoza was a major influence on Moses Hess in the 19th Century who was in turn the true intellectual father of both Labour Zionism and Historical Materialism.

None of this is a hill I'm willing to die on.  I don't think it's possible for us to fully comprehend the nature of God prior to The Resurrection.  But if many Christians are going to keep insisting The New Testament being written in Greek means we should also Stan some Greek Philosophers.  Maybe at least pick the school that at least kind of shares it's Semitic Roots.

Maybe some will object that the Incarnation is less necessary or significant if God and the material world were always "Homousian" in some sense.  But a distinction between the Divine and Human does still exist, especially as a result of The Fall in Genesis 3 which caused the separation that Jesus Incarnated to mend.   Some Eastern Orthodox Theologians have expressed the opinion that Incarnation may have been necessary even if Adam and Eve never sinned, I suspect that thinking is another result of Pythagorean Dualism.

I should also comment on the theory that Jesus was a Cynic Philosopher.  The Cynics and Stoics were kind of related, a Cynic was one of Zeno's early mentors before starting his own school, and many Cynic and Stoic beliefs about Ethics and How to live are very similar.  But the Cynics didn't really get into Metaphysics or Theology at all.  So really every argument for Jesus teachings sounding like a Cynic can just as easily work for Him sounding like a Stoic.  It is only that there is seemingly more surviving direct evidence of there being a Cynic presence near Galilee that makes these scholars think Cynic Jesus is more likely then Stoic Jesus.  

The evidence for Cynic presence in Galilee is mainly that a few Cynics are referred to as "of Gadara" but even Gadara was outside Galilee proper.  There were Stoics connected to Tyre and Sidon which were I feel about as close to Galilee as Gadara is.  Then there are a few Stoics connected to Tarsus which could be used to argue a Stoic influence on Paul.  And there was also one Stoic from Scythopolis which is literally between Gadara and Galilee.

Doyne Dawson in Cities Of The Gods argued that the Cynic revival during the reign of Augustus was largely old school Stoics who'd been driven out of the Mainstream Schools by the newer Puritanical Roman Stoics, and that maybe could have included some of those Cynics of Gadara.

Obviously Jesus didn't need to take anything he taught from any prior Human Philosophies.  But I think He was willing to use the language of the ones in some ways close to what He was teaching so his hearers could understand him.  That included intertestamental Jews like Hillel The Elder and maybe some Stoic ideas.

One thing that is incompatible with The Bible in Stoicism is how it has a view of History as endless cycles like in many Eastern Religions.  With The Bible there is a promised definitive Happy Ending coming.  So yes no Greek Philosophy is perfect.

The Resurrection is the one key part of Judeo-Christian Theology that no Greek Philosophers could fathom, however close they may be to us in other areas.  It seems the Stoic view of the After Life combined with the above cyclicalnesss makes it more like the Metaphysics of Star Wars then Biblical Christianity.  Still there is a lot that's similar between the Stoic view of The Soul and what I think the Biblical view is (which is neither the full Immortality of Pythagorean/Platonism nor is it simply dying with the Body as Annihilationist tend to teach).  The difference is in The Resurrection.

I bought Kathy L. Gaca's book The Making of Fornication. There's a lot I don't like about it, she gets Paul wrong completely.  But what interests me is how she argues Zeno and other early Stoics sought to essentially redefine what "Eros" meant, not in the sense of making it less sexual but in the sense of making it less about being an uncontrolable Passion.

And in the context of my prior post about Agape, how in antiquity Pagan Greeks rarely used it, while the New Testament never used Eros, nor did the LXX version of the Song of Songs.  I'm starting to form a personal hypothesis that perhaps at some point some Stoics, perhaps specifically Hellenized Jews of Galilee and/or Tarsus, decided to start using Agape as their word for Zeno's Eros.