THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE

AND

THE PROBLEM OF THE ONE AND THE MANY

INTRODUCTION
Even though Greek philosophy began with the problem "What is nature of reality?",
it soon turned to two related problems:
(1) the problem of change, "Is change real?" and
(2) the problem of the one and the many, "Is reality one or many?"
HISTORY
1. Milesians.
2. Pythagoreans.
3. Heraclitus.
4. Parmenides.
5. Atomism.
6. Plato.
7. Plotinus and Neoplatonism.
8. Augustine.
9. Spinoza.
10. Hegel.
11. Aristotle.
12. Thomas Aquinas.
13. Modern Physical Sciences.
14. Whitehead.
15. Bergson.
CONCLUSION.

HISTORY
1. Milesians.
  Greek philosophy began with the main problem: What is the nature of reality? Thales (624-550 B.C.) held that the nature of all things is water. According to Aristotle, Thales held that water was the first principle, or element or substance, of which all things born and to which all things will ultimately return. Aristotle also, in another place, said that Thales said, "all things are full of gods." [pantes phere theon]. Apparently this was an attempt to explain why things move and change. This view that matter is alive is called hylozoism, from the Greek hyle, "matter" and zoe, "life" and "alive". This is a more sophisticated form of the primitive view called animism (from the Latin anima, "soul") that sees that all things are animated by souls. Anaximander (611-547 B.C.) held that the nature of all is boundless, that is, it is neither water or any other of the elements, but without a definite nature - indeterminate, so that it could be the nature of all things. Anaximenes (588-524 B.C.) held that the nature of all things is air; that is, it is determinate, not indeterminate.
2. Pythagoreans.
  Pythagoras (572-497 B.C.) and the Pythagoreans held that the nature of all things is numbers. They held that the One is God. All things procede from the One and will return to the One; the manifold of visible bodies preceded out this unity into plurality, the many, from light into darkness. Just as every number is not only many, but also one number, so also are all things are one and many.
3. Heraclitus.
  Heraclitus (533-475 B.C.) held that all things was fire, because it represents change and movement; all things change. Some have interpreted this statement to mean that he held that only change is real; but a careful examination of his statements shows that he held that reality is permanent as well as changing. Since the only permanent thing is change, the permanent is in change and change is in the permanent. This principle or Reason (logos) is the One in the Many; unity in diversity. This One is the permanent and the basis of change in the many, in diversity and difference. Reality is both one and many, permanence and change.
4. Parmenides.
  Parmenides (c. 495 B.C.) denied both the many and change. Asserting that only the One is real and the many are illusionary; hence change is not real. By identifying thought and being, the rational and the real, Parmenides believed that he could show that change and the many are illogical, thus unreal. Parmenides thus shifted the problem from the nature of reality to the problem of the reality of change and of the many. He created the problem of the one and many (is reality one or many?). He held that "thought and being are the same thing", and that "being is and it is impossible for it not to be; it is impossible that non-being is". That is, being exists and non-being does not exist. Being alone exists.
  The logic of his argument depends on his defining the verb to-be as meaning both equivalence and existence. That is, "A is A" means "A = A" and "A is" means "A exists". Then "not-A" (-A) means "A does not exist"; hence, "A = -(-A)" means "A exists and not-A does not exist".
  Being is ungenerated and indestructible. It cannot come into being out of what does not exist. Ex nihilo nihil fit (Latin, "Out of nothing, nothing comes").
  Neither can being cease to be, since being is not non-being. Hence being is eternal and unchanging.
  Change is impossible; for if anything changes, it ceases to be what it is and becomes what it is not; and since being cannot cease to be and non-being does not exist, change is impossible.
  And also movement is impossible; for if anything moves, it must occupy empty space where it was not; and since empty space is non-being and does not exist, movement is not possible.
  And there can be only one being. For if there were more than one being, these beings would have to be separated by empty space; since empty space is non-being and does not exist, they cannot be separated and thus they must occupy the same space; thus the many are one and being is one.
  Finally being is homogeneous and simple, not having parts; for if it has parts, then it would be many; but since being is one, it has no parts and thus is it simple and homogeneous.
  From this homogeneity, Parmenides argued that being is finite. Since being is homogeneous, it must be solid, and, like the surface of a sphere, being is "perfected on every side", equally distance from its center at every point. Thus being must be finite. Parmenides' student, Melissus of Samos (5th cent. B.C.), rejected his teacher's conclusion that being is finite; being must be spatially and temporally infinite. For if being is finite, then beyond it there would be empty space; but since empty space is nothing, non-being, it does not exist and thus being occupies all space. Thus being is spatially infinite. Melissus, like Parmenides, rejected a void or vacuum, empty space, as impossible and non-existent, "for what is empty is nothing. What is nothing cannot be".
  Zeno of Elea (c.490-430 B.C.), a follower of Parmenides, attempted to prove that space or void and pluralism (that reality is composed of many things) was illogical and that time, motion and change are impossible. Zeno was a firm adherent to Parmenides' ideas and tried to show that they are true by showing that their opposites are impossible and absurd (reductiones ad absurdum). By this form of argument, he attempted to show that pluralism (that being is many, not one), empty space, and motion are impossible. These arguments are known as Zeno's paradoxes.
5. Atomism.
  Opposing the monism of Parmenides was the atomist Democritus (460-370 B.C.), a follower Leucippus, who held that all things consists of many (pluralism) indivisible things called atoms (Greek: a, "not", and tomos, "cutable", hence "not able to cut"). Each atom is absolutely homogenous, indivisible and immutable, just like the One of Parmenides. They are separate by empty space or void which Parmenides denied. Change is the movement of these atoms in this void, that is, a change of position; the atoms unaffect the void or each other, except to collide. These atoms always have been in motion and thus do not need anything to move them. Atoms have shape; the irregular shaped atoms when they collided become entangled with one another and group of atoms are formed. The observed characteristics in the world depend upon the the combination and separation of the atoms. Change of qualities, then, is due to the redistribution of atoms in space. Like bodies, souls are composed of atoms which are more mobile, because of rounder, smother shape. Even the gods are composed of atoms which are even finer and more mobile.
6. Plato.
  Plato (428-348 B.C.) modified Parmenides' dualism of Being and Non-Being making it a dualism of Being and Becoming, giving Being primacy while placing Becoming in an inferior amd subordinate role. Being is the realm of immutable logical essences (Ideas or Forms), while the realm of change, synonymous with generation and decay, has a inferior status somewhere between Being and Non-Being. In the Sophist, Plato seems to deny the concept of Non-Being. The dualism of Being and Becoming is not an absolute separation between Being and Becoming; in the Sophist, Being participates in Becoming, the Ideas as the Forms of material things.
  To this metaphysical dualism there corresponds the epistemological dualism of knowledge and opinion. Opinion comes from the realm of change through the senses and knowledge comes from the realm of the unchanging Ideas through the mind.
7. Plotinus and Neoplatonism.
  Plotinus (A.D. 205-270) attempted to explain by emanations how out of the immutable One the many and changing could have arisen. These emanations are logial rather than temporal. The first emanation from the One is the Nous or Intelligence and corresponds to Plato's realm of the Ideas or Forms. The One is differentiated into the many of the Ideas or Forms. The second emanation from the One is the Psyche or Soul; it is divided into higher and lower, the first standing nearer the Nous, looking up to it, being in no immediate contact with the material world and the latter, looking down, is the real soul of the material world, the third emanation from the One. This is the realm of change, forever oscillating between Being and Non-Being. According to Plotinus, individual souls proceed from the second level of emanation and are contained in it. Unlike the Divine Intellect of the first level of emanation, these souls are unable to grasp the immutable and timeless truth all at once, in an instantaneous act, but only gradually, step by step, by the laborious process of reasoning. Change and sucession thus are the mere result of the Soul's inability to grasp everything at once. This Greek doctrine of the two realms, the immutable realm of perfection and the changing realm of imperfection, and the corresponding doctrine timeless divine vision, contrasted to man's temporal and, therefore fragmentary, knowledge, came to dominate medieval theology and philosophy, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic. This philosophy is called Neoplatonism.
8. Augustine.
  Augustine (A.D. 354-430) interpreted the Neoplatonic doctrine of the timeless divine vision as the determinism of all things and theologically as the predistination of the elect. Nearly all medieval theologians accepted determinism as the logical consequence of this timeless divine vision that sees the totality of successive events in one act, totum simul. Not only Augustine, but Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) accepted this determinism based on divine omniscience. This created the difficult problem of reconciling determinism with human free will, which the Protestant Reformers, especially John Calvin (1509-1564), attempted to solve by simply denying free will in the doctrine of original sin and man's sinful nature.
9. Spinoza.
  In modern philosophy, the dualism of the Greek doctrine of the two realms, the eternal and unchanging and the temporal and changing, is still retained in systems of monistic pantheism. But the transcendence of the personal God of medieval theology was replace by an immanent impersonal being. Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) was the first modern philosopher to break with the traditional Christian view of the relation of God and Nature, denying the transcendence of God, that God is above and separated from the world. Starting with the definition of substance as "any independently existing thing," he argued there is only one absolutely independent thing, an infinite impersonal substance, which is God. This infinite substance has an infinite number of attributes of which we only know two, mind or thought and matter, or extension. These are modes or aspects of this one infinite substance. These modes follow from the nature of substance by the same inexorable necessity by which the properties of triangle follow from the definition of the triangle. The world, therefore, proceeds from God by necessity. That is, the world is a necessary consequence of the nature of God and it is a part of its nature. Since mind and matter is all that there is, at least all we know that there is, and since mind and matter are modes of the one infinite substance, namely God, it follows that All is God and God is All. This is called pantheism. The consequence of this view of the reality is that everything that is is a consequence of reason or cause and could not have been otherwise; and God could not have been otherwise. Is God free? "Yes," answers Spinoza, because God's freedom comes from not being dependent upon any other thing, since it alone exists. And as consequence of this there can be no miracles, nor the possiblity of miracles, since God cannot violate his own laws. Man's freedom, similarly, cannot be a freedom to do otherwise; What man calls freedom of will is just his igorance of the causes of his actions. Thus Spinoza still recognized that the unchangeability of God implies a strict determinism, and that the mode of extension is the realm of change.
10. Hegel.
  The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) also combined the two Greek realms of the eternal and the temporal in a pantheism. He combines Heraclitus' principle of constancy in change and the unity of opposites. Change takes place by the a pattern he called the Dialectic, which logical triad of Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis. The Antithesis is the opposite (not contradictory) of the Thesis; this opposition is overcome and reconciled in the Synthesis, which becomes the Thesis for the next stage of the development. Hegel saw this Dialectic in everything, in logic, in nature, and in history. This entire process, he interprets, as divine Reason, the Absolute, realizing itself in history. In terms of the Dialectic, the Thesis is the bare Absolute, pure Thought, and the Antithesis is Nature, and the Synthesis is Spirit, Being in and for itself, or Being returned to itself. God is not transcendent, as over and above the world, but immanent in it. God is coming to self-realization in human history and in each man by the Dialectic.
11. Aristotle.
  Plato's student Aristotle (348-322 B.C.) proposed a different solution to the problems change. He replaced Plato's dualism of Being and Becoming with a dualism of potentiality and actuality, interpreting change as the transition from potentiality to actuality; for example, an acorn is potentially an oak and an oak is the actualization of the acorn. He recognize three basic types of change:
  1. alternation or change of quality,
  2. growth and diminiution or change of quantity,
  3. locomotion or change of position.
  He analyzed the cause of change or causation into
  1. efficient cause which produces locomotion,
  2. final cause which produces growth,
  3. material cause and
  4. formal cause which produces alternation.
  For example, in the making of a statue, the efficient cause would be found in the blows of the chisel upon marble block, the final cause would be the reason why the sculptor was making the statue, the material cause would be the marble out which the statue was made, and the formal cause would be the form or shape which being imposed on the block of marble. Aristotle idenitifies matter with potentiality and form with actuality.
  All four causes are to be found in all that is, although in natural objects the final and formal causes coincide, since it is the final cause of the acorn to become an oak, and this is also the form to be actualized.
  Aristotle believed that there has always been change and that there must be an eternal cause of change, that is, the first cause and prime mover. This first mover is the mover of a whole series of moved movers but itself is unmoved. It causes all motion without itself being moved. This unmoved mover is God. Thus Aristotle believed that he had proved the existence of God. This argument from change along with others was fully developed in Aristotle's Metaphysics.
12. Thomas Aquinas.
  The Medieval Christian theologian and philosopher, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), accepted Aristotle's analysis of change and its causes. He also accepted Aristotle's argument for the existence of God from motion and change. But he modified it because he believed that the eternty of change implied that there was no creation. Aquinas presented these modified arguments as the first two of his five ways (quinque) in which the idea of God is required in explaining the world.
  1. There is motion in the world; and whatever is moved is moved by another. But an infinite series of moved movers are inadequate as explanation of motion. Hence, at the origin of this series there must be an initial mover that itself is unmoved. This unmoved mover is called God.
  2. There are efficient causes in the world. And each change can be explained in terms of its cause and each cause can be further explained in terms of causes. But the explanation of a cause cannot be complete by reference just to intermediate or secondary causes. Hence there must be a first cause to explain the secondary causes and the changes that they cause. This first cause is called God.
13. Modern Physical Sciences.
  This interpretation of change and the causes of the change came to dominate the Medieval thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and the Scholastics, until the rise of modern science in the 17th century with Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and Issac Newton (1642-1727); the interpretation of change as potentiality-actuality and all types of causation, except efficient cause, was abandoned. Efficient cause was understood in terms of forces, and later in term of force/energy fields, expressed in terms of mathematical functions. Issac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz (1646-1716) invented the differential calculus to deal with change. The development of field physics in the nineteenth century by Michael Faraday (1791-1867) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) completed the explanation of motion in terms of energy fields.
14. Whitehead.
  For the British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), the world is a process in which there is a interrelated scheme of actual events, like a table, a rainbow, the life of a man, the explosion of a star, no one of which can be understood apart from its relation to other events. There are actual and possible events. Over and above the actual events there is a vast realm of possible events, of all things that could be. Any real event is a actualized possibility. The realm of the possible is in contact with the realm of actual, so that the possible enters into the actual. This raises the question: Why does the world actualize this particular set of possible events? Why this world rather than another? Whitehead believes that it is necessary to postulate such metaphysical factor to explain why this particular universe. He therefore postulates an agent which causes to emerge from the timeless realm of the possible this particlar cosmos. This agent is God, whom Whitehead calls "the Principle of Concretion." God's function is to impose a limit upon the limitless number of possible events. Thus God determins an actual course of events which, "metaphysically speaking, might have been otherwise." Now it may be asked: Why is it that God makes concrete or actual this set of possibilities which is our world? What reason can be offered for God's having selected this world to actualize rather than another? Whitehead answers that there is no reason. The universe is ultimately irrational.
  "God is the ultimate limitation,
  and His existence is the ultimate irrationality.
  For no reason can be given for just that limitation
  which stands in His nature to impose.
  God is not concrete, but He is the ground of concrete actuality."
15. Bergson.
  For the French philosopher Henri Louis Bergson (1859-1941), philosophy must form itself according what is given in experience. In experience, we are given reason and intutition. Reason tends toward the static view of things and intuition toward fluidity and change. When one seeks to grasp the world through reason instead of intuition, one falsifies it. The paradoxes of Zeno resulted from interpreting the fluidity of time by the static categories of reason. This is the "spatializing time." To a certain extent one must spatialize time if one is attempt to grasp the nature of things. But our reason allows us to approximate but never reach the nature of its object. The act of reason, creating the concept of being, creates the concept of nothingness. These are extremes and are both false ideas. In fact, the idea of Nothing is dissatisfaction with what is. The way to avoid finally such false problems is to learn to grasp the object by intuitive awareness in which we somehow identify with the object itself. The mode of expression natural to reason is the concept; the mode natural to intuition is the metaphor.
  Bergson believed that change is more real than permanence, and time must be taken more seriously and not regarded as an appearance. The dynamic and static aspects of experience are paralleled by similar aspects of the world. The world in its temporal aspect is fluid, dynamic and continuous. In its spatial aspect, the world is static and discontinuous. Bergson identified the temporal aspect of things with the spirit; and the spatial aspect of things with the material aspect, with effete spirit. He illustrated the difference using the simile of a fountain. The water shooting forth is spirit; the water falling back is matter.
  Since God is spirit, this means that God works in things to make them go. God is the force, the Elan Vital, which makes things go. This means that God is the process of evolution. Evolution is a creative process, going on in time, not predetermined in advance, neither by an omnipotent and omniscient Creator, nor by matter governed by mechanical laws. Evolution works out its course spontaneously under the guidance of the vital impulse or vital impetus. Thus evolution has purpose and adventuring. One of the goals of evolution, Bergson states, was freedom. But each achievement fell back into mechanism until the creation of man when, through heightened complexity, and mechanism cancelling out mechanism, the breakthrough into freedom was achieved.
  The view of time consistent with this view of freedom is that the future is open, and is being decided moment by moment. According to Bergson, time is qualitiative change. Were the details of of the temporal process already settled, time could accelerate toward instantaneity. But these details are not settled, and time moves at its own pace. The future is not in existence, and both God and man create the alternatives and then act upon them; this insures freedom. The past continues to exist, internal to the present. In man it exists as memory. Bergson compares the situation to a rolling snowball in which it present state contains all its earlier states.

CONCLUSION.
From the Christian view of reality, all these proposed solutions to the problem of change (Is change real?) and to the problem of the one and the many (Is reality one or many?) attempt to solve them by reducing God to an impersonal being, an super "It", and ignoring the fundamental ontological difference between God as the Creator and all other beings as created. Even the solutions proposed by Augustine and Aquinas are the solutions proposed by the Greek philosophers ( Neoplatonism and Aristotle) dressed up in Christian terminology. Augustine's solution is Neoplatonism with the emanations intrepreted as creation and the difference between the Creator and His creation as the difference between the One infinite Being as God and the many as all finite beings. And Aquinas' solution is Aristotle's metaphysics of form and matter interpreted as necessary being and contingent being to explain the difference between God and all other beings. Aquinas interprets Aristotle's hierarchical pyramid of beings, whose lowest level is unformed matter, prime matter, and whose highest level is pure form without any matter [God] and between these two extremes are various levels of instances of formed matter, as the difference between God the Creator and all created beings. In both of these Christian (?) philosophies, God is the One and the Unchanging (without change) and the creation is the many and changing. This solution to the problems of change and of the one and the many is nothing more than the Greek view of reality dressed up in Christian terminology. The Greek view of reality said that only the one and the unchanging is real and the many and the changing are unreal and/or only appearance.

The Biblical view of reality is that the Creator is both one and many, the Trinity, the three in one. And the being of this Triune God is personal, not an impersonal super-It. The many of the Trinity are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three Persons of the Trinity are one being, homoousia; that is, they are uncreated, without beginning or end; they have existed forever, neither coming into existence nor will they ever cease to exist, thus unchanging. But as the Living God, this triune God make changes; they decided to create, "Let us make..." This triune God is both unchanging and changing. That is, this eternal God has sovereignly chosen to create everything that is not-God, "the heavens and the earth." This creation is real, but it is not ultimately real; and it is not just an appearance, but it has its own created reality. The difference between the Creator and his creation is not the difference between Being and non-Being or Being and Becoming, but it is the difference between uncreated being and created being; that is, there are two levels of being, and the uncreated level of being has created the created level of being.

This act of creation is often described as "creation out of nothing." This phrase is sometimes misunderstood to mean that the creation is nothing, non-being, since came out of nothing. But this not what this phrase was intended to denote; it means that there was no pre-existing something out which it was created and that by the act of creation that which did not exist has come into existence. It was intended to reject what Parmenides had asserted that "out of nothing nothing comes", and to assert that in God's act of creation, "something comes out of nothing"; that is, that creation is the act of bringing something that did not exist into existence.

According to the Biblical view, man is a created personal being in a created physical world and is as such a union of spirit (person or self) and body (psycho-physical organism).

"Then the Lord God formed man of the dust from the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and
man became a living soul [nephesh]" (Gen. 2:7 KJV).

When God breathed into the nostrils of the body of man the breath of life, He created man's spirit and man became a living soul. The soul of man is the union of this created spirit and the body formed from the dust of the ground. Thus man is a diparite being having two parts, spirit and body; the soul is not a third part of man but is the union of man's created spirit and his body. Thus man's soul as the union of spirit and body is the expression of the human spirit or person in and through the body. Thus, man is neither a diparite being having two parts of a body and soul, nor is he a triparite being having three parts of a body, soul, and spirit; man is a diparite being having a body and spirit with the soul as the union of the spirit (person) and the body.

What is a person?
A person may be defined as a being (an existent) that is self-determining, not determined, who has freedom, free will, the ability to choose. Now within the self, existence is known in the act of decision. To exist is to decide. This is particularly apparent in those momentous passionate decisions of a crisis. In fact, every act of decision, whether in a great crisis or not, is the place where existence can be found. The act of decision itself is also an act of existence. That is, to be is to choose. This was partially apprehended in Descartes' phrase: cognito ergo sum; I think, therefore I am. Descartes saw that the act of thinking or even doubting is to exist. For one to think or doubt he had to exist. However, since he sought to fit this into an Greek philosophical scheme of thought, Descartes did not recognize that thinking and doubting are basically acts of decision. Not only to think or doubt but to decide is to exist. Any act of decision is an act of existence: decerno ergo sum, I choose, therefore I am. A person therefore should be defined as a being (an existent) that is self-determining, not determined, who has freedom, free will, the ability to choose. A person is to be distinguished from a non-person, a thing, an "it," which is a being that is determined, not self-determining, that has no freedom, no free will, no ability to choose. Thus the existence of a person is found in his ability to choose, to make decisions.
"I choose, therefore, I am", not, "I think, therefore, I am".
To be is to choose, not just to think or to preceive.
Man's reason is a function and an expression of his will. This freedom of decision of man, not his reason, is what distinguishes man from the rest of creation; this is what gives to man his existence as a person or self and to his reason that human and personal character.

Now a careful analysis of decision reveals that every act of decision involves three elements:
(a) the agent making the decision,
(b) the alternatives to be decided between, and
(c) a criterion to decide by.
This third element of every decision, the criterion by which the choice is made, means that every human decision involves a reference to a criterion in or beyond the self. In other words, behind every human decision as to what a person should do or think, there must be a reason. That is, the choice between the altenatives is made with reference to some criterion of choice, and choice cannot be made without this reference.
Now the criterion of a choice must be also chosen, and that choice is made with reference to an ultimate criterion, an ultimate reason for the choice of the criterion. That is, the ultimate reason for any decision, practical or theoretical, must be given in terms of some particular criterion, an ultimate reference or orientation point in or beyond the self or person making the decision. This ultimate criterion is that person's god. In this sense, every man must have a god, that is, an ultimate criterion of decision. Thus in the very exercise of his freedom-of-decision, man shows that he is such a being that must necessarily appeal to an ultimate criterion, a god. In fact, his every uncoerced decision implies this ultimate criterion. Since decisions involve a reference to an ultimate criterion beyond the self, to a god, the Bibical view of man is that he is a religious animal, a being who must have a god.

According to the Greek thinkers, Reason, the universal and necessary, is the divine or God. The divine, according to the Greek conception of reality, is that which is not subject to change, decay or death; the gods in Homer are "immortals." The divine, therefore, cannot be known through the senses because that which is known through the senses is a world characterized by change, decay or death. But since the objects of reason are always and everywhere the same, the divine can only be known through reason. The objects of Reason are the Ideas, the Universals, and the eternal, unchanging realm of the Ideas, the Universals, are the divine. Both Plato and Aristotle held reason to be divine. God is the divine or eternal realm of the Ideas in Plato's philosophy, or he is a self-thinking thought of Aristotle's philosophy. Now since the concepts of God and man are correlatives, the Greek concept of man reflects the image of this god. Since reason is god, man viewed in the light of this god, is a rational animal. Reason is the divine part of man. This view of man is the underlying assumption in the all of the historical attempts to relate the human to the divine in Christ. This Greek view of man is the cause of the problem of the nature of Christ.

This is not the Bibical view of man or of God. God is not Reason, the universal and necessary. And Ultimate reality is not the universal and the necessary. That is, Reason is not God. God is a person (or more accurately, three persons) whose existence is not in His reason but in His unlimited sovereign free decision and will; it is not the universal ideas in God's mind that determine how or why God will create man and the world, but His unlimited sovereign will ( Rev. 4:11). Since reason is a function of the will, God is rational and His reason is a function of His will. Thus the world that God has chosen to create is rational.

Man is also a person (or more accurately, a unity of spirit [person] and body - see Gen. 2:7) whose existence is also to be found, not in his reason, but in his limited free will and decision. And since decisions involve a reference to an ultimate criterion in or beyond the self, to a god, the Bibical view of man is that he is a religious animal, a being who must have a god. Reason is not the divine part in man but is a function of the will of the person. To be is to choose, not to think or to know. Knowledge and reason depend upon a prior decision as to what is real. It is upon decision that any knowledge finally depends.

The first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, used their freedom of choice to disobey God and choose a false god, wisdom and knowledge; that is, Reason. The basic sin is turning from the true God and to faith in a false god of some kind; it is idolatry. Sin is any choice contrary to ultimate allegiance or faith in the true God (Rom. 14:23). The consequence of Adam's sin was death (Gen. 2:16-17): physical death (the separation of their spirits from their bodies) and spiritual death (the separation of their spirits from God). In other words, they lost their fellowship with God and with each other (Gen. 3:7-8) and their dominion over creation. But even though they have fallen from the image of God, they still are persons and still have the freedom of choice.

The descendants of Adam are born not in the image of God but in the image of Adam, the man of dust, the old man, and as such are subject to death, physical and spiritual. Death has been inherited by all men (Rom. 5:12). And since they have been born into the world spiritually dead, alienated from God, not knowing personally the true God, and since they must have a god, an ultimate criterion of decision, they choose a false god as their God and thereby sin (Gal. 4:8). The creation, man himself, contains a knowledge about the true God which leaves them without excuse for the sin of idolatry (Rom. 1:19-20). But this knowledge is about the true God and is not a personal knowledge of the true God which comes from an encounter and fellowship with God.

As Christianity spread thoughout the Roman world, the Biblical view of reality came into conflict with the Greek view of reality. The difference between these two views of reality is most clearly seen in their views of man. Attempts were made to resolve this conflict and the difference in their views of man by trying to synthesize these two views of reality.

Hebrew-Christian Medieval Synthesis Greek-Roman

God Creator Supernatural - Grace The rational

World Created Natural - Nature The non-rational

Man spirit (person) &
body spirit (moral) & soul (rational) &
body (animal) mind (rational) &
body (non-rational)

	Hebrew-Christian	Medieval Synthesis	Greek-Roman
God	Creator	Supernatural - Grace	The rational
World	Created	Natural - Nature	The non-rational
Man	spirit (person) & body	spirit (moral) & soul (rational) & body (animal)	mind (rational) & body (non-rational)

Ultimate reality is not the universal and necessary and this Reason is not man's ultimate criterion but the sovereign will of the Creator who made all things and has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. This basic incompatibility between the Greek and Biblical view of God and man explains the conflict between Greek philosophy and the Christian faith and the failure of the attempted synthesis of these divergent points of view by Augustine and Aquinas. All attempts to synthesize the classical Greek view of God and man with the Biblical view will fail. Worst of all, the Biblical view of God and man will be obscured and misunderstood.

And this is what happened in the early church as it sought to explain the relation of the divine and human in the God-man Jesus Christ. They misunderstood the rational soul of man as the third part of man, the spirit and body being the other two parts. But the rational soul of man is not the third part of man, but is the expression of man's spirit or person in and through his body (see Gen. 2:7). Thus the Biblical view of man is that man is a dipartite being having a body and a spirit (or person) with the soul as the union of a spirit and the body. Hence, man is neither the Greek view of man as a diparite being having two parts of a body and rational soul, nor the Christian synthesis view of man as a triparite being having three parts of a body, rational soul, and spirit. The Biblical view of man is that his soul is not a third part of man but the expression of the spirit in and through his body, and thus the union of the spirit and the body.

In the incarnation, the divine Word, the Son of God, took the place, not of the human soul (psuche), but of the human spirit (pneuma) in the man Jesus. His human soul is the union of His divine spirit and His human body. Thus Jesus is one person with two natures; His divine nature is the divine Word, the Son of God, and His human nature is His human soul and His human body where His human soul is the expression of His one divine spirit or person through His human body.

The purpose of the incarnation of the Son of God is salvation. Since salvation is basically from death to life, Christ on the cross entered into our death, both spiritually and physically, in order that man can be made alive with Christ in His resurrection. By faith we can then say; His death is my death and His resurrection is my resurrection. On the cross, Christ died both spiritually and physically. His body died physically on the cross when He gave up His spirit (Matt. 27:50; John 19:30). His spirit was separated from His body. But before He died physically, He died spiritually.

"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice,
'Eli, Eli, la'ma sabach-tha'-ni?' that is,
'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'" (Matt. 27:46)

This cry was misunderstood by the bystanders as a calling upon Elijah (Matt. 27:47-49). But it was not a calling on Elijah, but it was His spirit as the Son of God calling upon God His Father. He had entered into our spiritual death inherited from Adam and His spirit was separated from God His Father. This spiritual death was not a non-existence of His spirit, but was a separation between His spirit as the Son of God from God His Father. This is only time in all eternity that He as the Son of God was separated from God His Father. It happened because on the cross He had entered into our spiritual death inherited from Adam (Rom. 5:12; I Cor. 15:21-22). This raises the problem of how is this possible. As it was expressed by those who mocked Him, saying

"He saved others; he cannot save himself.
He is the King of Israel;
let him come down now from the cross,
and we will believe in him.
He trusts in God; let God deliever him now, if he desires him;
for he said, 'I am the Son of God.'" (Matt. 27:42)

How can God die? As Greeks understood the divine, the gods are immortal; they never die. Then how could the Son of God die? Now their understanding of God as immortal was based on their understanding of God as unchanging in His being, therefore He could not change by dying. And they argued that God does not change because He is timeless. But Biblical God does not change because He is timeless, but because He keeps His promises. The prophet Malachi says for God,

"⁶For I, the Lord, do not change;
therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
⁷From the days of your fathers
you have turned aside from my statutes,
and have not kept them.
Return to Me, and I will return to you,"
says the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 3:6-7 NAS)

If Israel turns from their sins, then they will not be consumed because the Lord God is unchanging in keeping His promises not to destroy them if they will return to Him. Thus the Biblical God is unchanging, not because He is a timeless unchanging super-It, but because the Biblical God, who keeps His promises, is three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are without beginning or end. The Biblical God has time, but His time has no beginning nor end. His time is an absolute time, not like our created time which has a beginning.
"In the beginning God created heaven and earth." (Gen. 1:1)
The beginning of the heaven and earth is also the beginning of created time. When God created the heaven and earth, God created our time. But God's time was not created; it never started nor will it end; it is absolute without beginning or end.

God created the heavens and earth by an act of His will. As those in heaven sang,

"Worthy art thou, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for thou didst create all things,
and by thy will they exist and were created." (Rev. 4:11)

God is three Persons by whose will all things were created and exist. Now an act of the will, a choice, involves time: the time before the decision, the now of the choice, and the time after of the choice. Since God as three persons makes choices, and since an act of the will, a choice, involves time, then God must have time in which They exercises His will. Thus this will of God means that God has time, but it is not a created time with a beginning, but absolute time without beginning or end; it is eternal. So once in all eternity, at the cross, the Son of God died spiritually by being separated from God the Father. But He did not remain in this spiritual death; God the Father raised the Son of God from the dead, not only raised Him physically from the dead, but also spiritually from the dead. And thus God provided for us salvation from death to life.