Living, Moving, and Being

Recently I've been working my way through R.C. Sproul's The Consequences of Ideas lecture series. It's a series about the history of Western philosophy, examining the various philosophical systems from a Christian worldview and discussing, as the title indicates, the consequences of those systems of thought. Thus far this fascinating journey has taken me from the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales to "The Philosopher" Aristotle (I've watched further on to Thomas Aquinas, but there's a study guide with questions and I've only gone through those up to Aristotle). These various worldviews have mostly been responses to the question of ultimate reality.

What fascinates me is how some of these thinkers, who had no access to Sacred Scripture, came to at least semi-Biblical ideas from their thought processes. It's also interesting how the God of the Bible answers all of those questions.

One of those questions was this: what is ultimate reality? What is the ultimate substance, the stuff, that makes up reality? According to what I've learned, this substance had to have the attributes of life, existence, and motion in and of itself. In other words, it's life, existence, and motion had to be uncaused. It had to be the source of those three things.

Thales' solution to this question was water. He thought it through pretty well.

1. Everything living needs water to live. There is life.
2. Water can exist in the three basic forms of matter. Its ordinary form is that of a liquid. When frozen, it becomes a solid. When heated enough, it becomes a gas. There is existence.
3. Water appears to move on its own. This is where Thales' idea falls, but not for lack of trying. He knew nothing of the moon's influence on the tides. Water simply looked as if it moves with no other influence.

Other philosophers said that the substance was air, others earth, and still others fire. Some said it was all four.

But what was it that the Apostle Paul said to the thinkers in Athens? "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). He was quoting from a Greek poem, but he declared that this was true of Jesus Christ. He was directly answering this question. God is the source of all life, existence, and motion. He himself lives, exists, and moves by his own power, not influenced by anything or anyone else. The Bible says so in John 1:3-4: "All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men." And for God to create, he has to first move. He begins all motion. He creates, beginning all life. And he sustains all of existence. He is sovereign over all life, motion, and existence.

I hope to talk more about this later on as I learn more about other ideas the philosophers have come up with. I think it would be interesting to do so. Later on in history we actually start seeing Christian philosophers such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. I'm not sure what I'll do when I get to that point in history, but I'm sure I can come up with something.