Ontological philosophy entails, as we have seen,
the existence of an immanent God. But believers in a traditional religion,
especially those who believe in a transcendent God, are likely to be skeptical
about the world itself being sufficiently perfect to be worthy of worship.
One way to quell such doubts is to show that all the reasons for holding that
a transcendent God is worthy of worship are reasons that also hold for the
immanent God of ontological philosophy. That is possible in this case because
the points of disagreement about the nature of God are not relevant to God's
worthiness of worship.
In what follows, I will argue that the immanent God entailed by spatiomaterialism is worthy of worship by arguing that it has all the traits that are thought to make the traditional God of epistemological philosophy worthy of worship. And since it will also solve the theoretical problems that philosophical theology has encountered trying to think about God coherently, it may even convince traditional theists that such an immanent God is what they have actually been believing in.
This is to give an ontological interpretation of Christianity, but a similar argument can be constructed, I believe, for the beliefs of all the other traditional religions. In their case as well, what makes God worthy of worship is also implicit in this immanent God, as would be shown by giving an ontological interpretation of them. That is, at least, what ontological philosophy would expect, since traditional religions are trying to grasp something about the world that really is holy, but as through a glass darkly. However, only Christian theology will be discussed in the following argument. Christianity is the religion in which epistemological philosophy was historically developed most fully, and though this critique of Christian theology will suggest how it would work in other traditional religious, I must leave that to others.
Let me emphasize, however, that what I say here about Christianity is not the result of a conversion experience on my part. I have not been reborn by accepting Jesus as my savior. I long ago abandoned the faith of my parents and left the church, because I could not believe that naturalism is false, at least, not in the way required to believe in a transcendent God. Nor could I believe that one discovers the truth about such matters by an act of faith. However, in the long process of working out this ontological explanation of the wholeness of the world, I have become increasingly sympathetic with religion, for I have slowly discovered that the wholeness of the world entails the existence of a perfect being -- one that can be recognized as the God referred to by Christian theology, because it has all the traits that make the transcendent God of traditional Christianity worthy of worship. Thus, all that Christians would have to give up in order to recognize that ontological philosophy confirms what they want to believe about the world are metaphysical beliefs that cause theoretical problems — except possibly for the belief in personal immortality, and I will argue that they would not really want that, if they understood the nature of existence.
Some might, therefore, claim that Jesus is a prophet of ontological philosophy. But Jesus is not what leads reason to recognize the existence of God. The path that leads to the explanation of the wholeness of the world in its most complete sense is the path that Socrates was on. And that is a path that began when the Pre-Socratic philosophers gave up religious explanations of the world in favor of an ontological explanation. Indeed, ontological philosophy is, I believe, the wisdom that Socrates was seeking when he distinguished himself from the sophists as a philosopher, that is, a lover of wisdom. It is the knowledge of the nature of the world, including the nature of goodness, that makes rational beings choose goals that are good because they are good. That is, knowledge is virtue! The Socratic principle is true. Thus, although the end of the road of reason is, as I will argue, what Jesus was talking about, it is only reason, not faith (and certainly not force), that can lead us there.
The doctrines of Christian theology. What I take to be Christian theology can be summed up as five doctrines. They are mainly the doctrines that emerged in the medieval period. Many variations on them and interpretations of them have been developed since then, including some that take Christianity to be merely a mythical representation of a moral code. But the more traditional Christian beliefs about the nature of God and the meaning of life bring out more clearly what is true in Christianity, according to this ontological theology.
God’s transcendence of the natural world. Christians (and Jews) have to believe that God transcends the natural world, because He is supposed to have created it by an act of free will. The natural world includes everything in space and time, and thus, unless God were a substance that exists outside space and time, He could not have created it.
The trinity. The most distinctive tenet of Christian theology is, perhaps, the doctrine of the trinity, that God is actually three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father is the creator of the natural world, who for some reason put human beings on earth. The Son is the incarnation of God on earth whose sacrifice was meant to earn the forgiveness of our sins so that believing that Jesus is Christ would give us salvation from sin and eternal bliss. Thus, God had to be at least two persons. But Christians also believe that God acts in the world by way of the Holy Spirit as well, and that is God as a third person. Thus, despite being a single substance, God is supposed to be three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (and theologians have struggled vainly to explain how that is possible).
Original sin. The source of evil in the world is supposed to be a result of original sin. In the beginning, when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, God forbad them to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But Adam and Eve had free will, and being persuaded by a serpent, representing Satan (an angel in rebellion against God), they ate the apple, thereby defying God’s command. That was the original sin. As punishment, God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and after the fall, they and all their children and children's children became mortal beings. They were ashamed of their bodies; they had to labor in order to live; they were both agents and patients of such suffering as war; and they who had to suffer famine and disease, as well as death. Thus, the evil in the world is supposed to come from an act of free will in defiance of God’s command. And their offspring would always be tempted to choose evil and sin, because Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The gospel. Christians believe that the “good news” brought by Jesus as the Christ, or savior, was that God had forgiven our sins, including our original sin. It was possible, therefore, with the grace of God, to avoid sin. This meant, according to Jesus, that the kingdom of God is at hand and, since it would thereafter be possible to avoid the evils that had plagued the descendants of Adam and Eve, we would live in heaven forever. All that is required for this to happen is that that we believe in Jesus as our savior, that we love God, and that we love our neighbors as ourselves, that is, a conversion to Christianity. Though only faith in Christ is required for salvation from sin, it is the struggle to overcome sin and evil that is the basic meaning of life, according to Christianity.
Immortality. When Jesus was crucified, God sacrificed his only Son, and the divinity of Jesus was shown by his resurrection from the dead after three days and his bodily ascension into Heaven some while later, joining his Father. The reward of believing in Christ is salvation from sin, and according to the traditional Christian belief, that means having eternal life in the presence of God, that is, in heaven. Thus, Christianity holds that everyone has an immortal soul in the sense that each person is a substance that lives after the death of their bodies on earth. For the saved, that means living eternally in the presence of God, and heaven is thought to transcend the natural world, just as God Himself does. But the eternal fate of our souls depends on our free will, that is, whether we choose to believe in Christ. Those who do not are not saved, and their immortal souls spend eternity in Hell, deprived of God’s presence. Thus, what is at stake in the choice one makes about how to live one’s life is the fate of one’s eternal soul.
An ontological interpretation of Christian doctrines. God is immanent, according to ontological philosophy, because it implies that the world itself is a perfect being. The basic nature of a spatiomaterial world like ours gives rise to progressive evolution, and that eventually leads to the existence of perfect rational beings, who act for the good of the world as a whole. That is our foundation for explaining what is true and what is false in the doctrines of Christian theism. Insofar as the beliefs that make the Christian transcendent God worthy of worship can be explained by our immanent God, Christians must admit that this pantheistic God is also worthy of their worship. Nor can Christians deny that this immanent God is worthy of their worship, if the ways in which it contradicts traditional theism are not what make their transcendent God worthy of worship.
This way of showing that the pantheistic God of ontological
philosophy is worthy of worship is, of course, an ad hominum argument
for Christians. It will not persuade everyone, because non-Christians may
deny that even the Christian God is worthy of worship.
The central doctrine
from which Christianity derives its name is the belief that Jesus was Christ,
the Son of God. The doctrine of the incarnation of God is problematic, because
it means that one and the same substances that created the natural world must
also be particular substance in that world. It is hard to explain how a single
substance can be two such different persons, but if God must be two persons,
it is not much more implausible to suppose that there are three altogether.
Indeed, Christianity assumes that, in addition to the transcendent Father
and bodily Son, God exists in a third form, as the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit
is supposed to do God’s work on earth. Thus, the doctrine of the trinity holds
that, even though God is a single substance, He is three different persons:
the Father, who created the natural world and sent his Son to save us; the
Son, who brought the father's word to the world; and the Holy Spirit, who
does God's work.
It seems to some that the doctrine of the trinity is self-contradictory, and though believers are willing to believe that it is just another mystery that lies beyond the understanding of finite rational beings, the immanent God entailed by spatiomaterialism suggests a solution to that mystery. It is possible for finite rational beings to understand how the three persons of God are a single substance, because in a spatiomaterial world like our own, that substance could be the whole world.
It is possible to explain what is meant by "God, the Father,"for that could be the basic nature of the world. That is what is responsible for the existence of beings like us in the world, for it is the ontological cause of the evolutionary process by which a rational beings come to exist in the world. Since what evolves in the culture of philosophical spiritual animals is the knowledge that provides makes heaven on earth possible. The word of God can be seen as what is spoken by rational subjects with ontological reason, and thus, they can be seen as what is meant by "God as the Son." That is, the individual's knowledge of the truth about the wholeness of the world, including the nature of goodness, is the knowledge of the word of the Father, which Christ was supposed to have. And the "Holy Spirit" refers to the spiritual animal that exists when the word of the Father is known, because when ontological philosophy evolves, reason understands the wholeness of the world, and by acknowledging its religious interest, ontological reason does God’s work, the work of becoming a perfect rational being, that is, God’s self-creation. Thus, all three persons of God can be seen as aspects of the same perfect substance, namely, the world as a whole.
It might seem that, although ontological philosophy can explain how a single substance can have all three aspects, it does not quite explain the doctrine of the Trinity, because it does not show that they are all persons. Individuals are clearly persons, because they are rational beings. And since spiritual animals are rational beings, they can also be called persons. But even if the basic nature of a spatiomaterial world like ours is perfect in the sense of giving rise to natural perfection, the world as a whole is hardly a person.
This objection overlooks, however, a consequence of ontological reason acting in the interest of the world as a whole. When reason takes on the function of being the behavior guidance system for the world itself, the world itself becomes a rational being. And since rational beings are persons, the world is a person.
In other words, the reason that there are three persons of God is that ontological reason has three practical interests, individual, spiritual and religious.
These three rational beings are a single substance in the sense that they are all constituted by space and matter, the substances whose existence explains the existence of everything else in the world. The difference between them is that they are rational beings on different levels of part-whole complexity in space. The Son refers to each of the rational subjects who are parts of spiritual animals after ontological reason evolves. The Holy Spirit includes the spiritual animal (or all the spiritual animals) whose behavior is guided by ontological reason to do what is good for the world as a whole. And the Father is the whole world to whose natural perfection religious goals contribute.
To be sure, what is affected by the activities of the Son and the Holy Spirit may extend no farther than their own planetary system. But that does not mean that it is not a contribution to the natural perfection of the world as a whole. It does make the whole world more perfect than it would be without ontological reason, and it happens throughout the universe, since because perfect rational beings evolve on every suitable planetary system.
The most telling objection to traditional pantheism is that it is incompatible with God being a person, but that does not tell against the kind of pantheism entailed by ontological philosophy.
The God of ontological theology is a person, because He has
the nature of a rational being. Even though ontological philosophy takes the
world as a whole to be God, that is compatible with God being a person, because
the world itself has behavior that is guided to do what is good for it by
rational subjects who do what as good for the world as part of their self
interest. That is not incompatible with God being a rational agent that also
has an individual and spiritual self interest. Indeed, even if Christianity
had not believed in the Trinity, ontological philosophy would still have had
to recognize something surprisingly similar to it, because a spatiomaterial
world like ours necessarily has rational subjects with an individual, spiritual
and rational self interest.
It is even possible
for ontological philosophy to confirm the traditional Christian view of original
sin as the source of evil in the world and, thereby, understand its view of
the meaning of life. But since its interpretation of that doctrine locates
original sin in the larger context of evolution, it avoids the problems that
the existence of evil has posed for traditional theism.
Original sin can be explained as war. Accordingly, the Garden of Eden would represent the innocent life of higher primates or first hominids. War was an inevitable evil, because this means that the serpent that talked Adam and Eve into disobeying God's command was the evolution of natural sentences (rather than an angel rebelling against God, which is, in any case, difficult to reconcile with God's omnipotence. The use of language made war a possible means for groups of hominids to overcome the scarcity caused by the reproduction of spiritual animals, and it can even be seen as a "violation" of God's command in the sense that groups of nonlinguistic animals are apparently unable to evolve the behavior of killing other groups of animals from their own species in order to acquire food. But the evolution of war in spiritual animals was inevitable, and the advent of war can be seen as banishing them from the Garden of Eden, for it forced them to live in a dangerous world indeed. To fight wars was, furthermore, to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because as we have seen, the group-level selection pressure imposed by warfare led to the evolution of reason. Though the original function of reason was to choose more reliably between war and peace, that became, as reason evolved, the more general choice between good and evil, because reason had to enable members of spiritual animals to live at peace with one another. Evil is what is at stake in morality, because individuals had the option of intentionally harming others as a means to their ends, and from their adaptation to war, they even had desires that made it possible to enjoy killing other members of their own species. Reason discovered moral rules that limited the pursuit of their interests, and it gave them autonomy, or free will, that is, the ability to resist even the strongest animal desire and do what they believe is good and right. But it was an imperfect mechanism, and moral evil was an inevitable apart of the world. Thus, their fate was to be both the agent and patient of harm done intentionally, both war and moral trespasses against other individuals — not to mention bearing the burden of the labor involved in the evolution spiritual animals.
Ontological philosophy can, therefore, confirm, in a way, the traditional doctrine of original sin. But what is more, ontological theology solves other problems that Christian theology faces about the nature of evil.
One problem with the doctrine of original sin is the inability to explain why God would create beings with a free will who He knew would disobey Him. That is supposed to be part of God’s mysterious purpose and, thus, beyond human understanding. And even though Christians believe that God ultimately would forgive them their original sin, making salvation possible, there is no explanation why, generation after generation, the fate of their immortal souls should depend on the choices they make on earth. That was still part of the mystery.
Another problem is the fact that evil exists at all, for that argues against the existence of a supernatural God. That is the so-called “problem of evil.” If God created a world that contains evil, then either (1) God must not be absolutely good, (2) God must not be all-knowing, or (3) God must not be all-powerful. God must lack at least one of these three traditional perfections. There is some plausibility to the claim that the existence of moral evil is necessary on the grounds that evil will be done as long as there are beings who have both free will and the capacity to do evil, and that cannot be avoided, if the existence of human beings in a world like our serves some higher purpose that God in creating the natural world in the first place. But it is still a mystery why the existence of finite beings with free will is good or makes the natural world good. And even if there is some such explanation of moral evil, there is still no explanation why natural evil, such as famine, disease, and earthquakes, should be part of God's plan.
Ontological theology, however, solves both these problems. Evil does not show that an immanent God must lack any of the personal perfections of God, because the world as a perfect rational being will do everything that can be done to avoid evil in the world. It is just that the evil that occurs in evolution is not something that can be avoided, because that is how perfect rational beings come to exist.
Ontological philosophy also explains, therefore, why there are beings with free will who must struggle against original sin in order to avoid evil. War and the evolution of reason is an inevitable stage in the evolution of spiritual animals. Furthermore, this explanation reveals why the existence of such rational beings is good: it makes a necessary contribution to the natural perfection of life, the natural perfection of evolutionary change, and in the end, to the evolution of perfect rational beings in the world. No being who lacks the power to do evil can be an all-powerful being. The progressiveness of evolution, therefore, compensates for the moral evil that exists in the world.
Finally, even the natural evil that exists in the world is compensated.
Nothing can be good without evil, because evil is necessary for evolution.
The scarcity caused as reproductive cycles multiply is evil, by our definition
of "good", because it detracts from the natural perfection of which
it is part. But such evil is compensated. There would be no natural perfection
and, thus, no goodness without it, because that is how reproductive cycles
impose natural selection on themselves and propel evolution along. Likewise,
since disease is a necessary consequence of the evolution of organisms at
lower levels of biological organization, it makes a contribution to the natural
perfection of the ecology. Death is a necessary part of the structure of the
reproductive cycles of multicellular animals and, thus, of subsequent evolution.
And even natural catastrophes, like the impact of asteroids, play a necessary
role, because they alter conditions so radically that inherently more powerful
organisms can replace inherently less powerful incumbents in ecological niches.
That is, after all, how mammals replaced dinosaurs in the most energy rich
ecological niches some 65 million years ago.
Not only does the belief
in an immanent God make it possible to see a truth in the Christian belief
about the meaning of life -- that it is the struggle for salvation from original
sin -- but it can also be seen as confirming the “glad tidings” taught by
Jesus about eventual success.
Grace. The “good news” was that God has forgiven us our sins, and according to ontological philosophy, Christians are right to believe that salvation from original sin is possible. Indeed, it can even be said to depend on the grace of God, although the grace of God must be understood, not as a gift of forgiveness of sin by a transcendent God, but rather as the fact that the nature of the world makes perfection possible for spiritual animals and their members. It is possible in the end to control population growth and arrange human affairs so that wars do not occur and human beings are not even tempted to do evil to one another. Indeed, that is part of the natural perfection of the world itself that ontological reason undertakes to bring about when it acknowledges its religious interest.
Heaven. Salvation from sin means that the kingdom of God is at hand and that we shall have eternal life in heaven. What Jesus saw was the kind of natural perfection that is possible for beings like us, who can see into one another minds and act together in pursuing goals. Jesus was right to insist that what it involves is loving God and loving one’s neighbor, for that is what is involved in pursuing religious goals. But according to ontological theology, heaven will be at hand only when ontological reason acknowledges its religious interest and pursues goals because they make the world as a whole naturally perfect. And in that heaven, there will be eternal life. Once a perfect rational being exists, reason can go on pursuing goals that are in individual, spiritual and religious interest forever, because spiritual animals can live as long as the world.
Belief in Christ. Salvation is supposed to be the result of believing in Christ, that is, believing that He is the Son of god and following his commandments to love God and our neighbors as ourselves. But Jesus was mistaken to believe that all that heaven requires is a change of heart, a conversion to Christianity. Heaven will exist only when original sin is overcome, and according to this naturalistic ontological interpretation of his gospel, that requires the labor of reason, though cultural evolution and history. When Jesus taught his vision of perfection, there was still much more for reason to learn before it could understand the wholeness of the world. And once that is understood, reason still must do God’s work by, among other things, controlling the causes of war and controlling the causes of the moral evil that individuals do to one another.
On this interpretation of Christian theology, therefore, the significance of the belief that Christ is God become man is that it is possible for rational subjects like us to understand the word of God and create heaven on earth. That is, Jesus represents the fate of rational subjects generally. It happens during the philosophical stage of spiritual evolution when reason finally understands how the world is whole, sees itself as the inevitable outcome of evolution, and by understanding the nature of goodness, understands how and why it is good for reason to pursue goals that are good for the world as a whole. As ontological reason acknowledges its religious interest and does the work of creating God, original sin is overcome and eternal life in heaven begins.
In sum, salvation depends, not on faith, but on reason. The
incarnation of God is that rational subjects have the kind of understanding
that God was supposed to have when he created the natural world. It is, in
effect, to understand God's purpose in creating the world. And that is what
makes it possible to create heaven on Earth.
The promise of eternal
life in the presence of God may seem to be where ontological philosophy fails
to explain Christian theology, because it must deny that rational subjects
have immortal souls. The immortal soul is supposed to be a substance that
continues to endure though time after the body decays. But except for the
matter and space that constituted the body, there is no such substance, and
thus, there can be no life after death. That does not mean, however, that
ontological philosophy must deny the promise of eternal life in heaven.
Though they are not immortal as individuals, rational beings can and will be immortal as a spiritual animal. Spiritual animals can be immortal, because they do not reproduce by the sexual mixing of parts of their structures, like eukaryotes. They reproduce by division, like prokaryotes. The same spiritual animal can continue to exist indefinitely, and that is what begins when reason evolves into God. The perfect rational being that comes to exist on earth as the outcome of evolution is the existence of God in the world, and that is eternal life in heaven. The immortality of the spiritual animal is a kind of immortality for the rational subject, because the spiritual animal is an aspect of the self in whose interest the rational subject acts. Indeed, the world itself as a whole is an aspect of the self in whose interest the rational subject acts, once the world becomes a perfect rational being in that sense. The immortality of the spiritual animal and the world are way in which the self live on after the death of the individual body.
To be sure, the individual must eventually die. Since rational subjects are multicellular animals, they cannot live without going through reproductive cycles in which they are born and die. But the life of the rational subject as an individual multicellular animal is not the only life she has, because she is, as a rational being with ontological reason, the agent who guides the behavior of her spiritual animal and even the world itself, not just her own body. That is, the self in whose interest she acts is not just the individual, but also the spiritual animal and the world, and her spiritual and divine self are immortal. That is how the rational subject has life after death.
Ontological philosophy does imply, nevertheless, that rational subjects do not continue to live as individuals after the death of the body, and this is not what Christians believe about how their souls are immortal. It may, however, be closer to what Jesus himself actually meant, because as a Jew, the kind of salvation that he probably believed the Messiah would bring was heaven on Earth.
The belief that salvation takes the form of immortal souls in an otherworldly heaven could have been what the earliest followers of Jesus came to believe in order to avoid losing their faith in Jesus’ message when he was crucified. If they expected the kingdom of God to begin immediately on earth, his death would suggest that Jesus was simply mistaken. But it was possible to continue to believe that Jesus' followers would have eternal life in heaven, even though it did not happen on earth, if it meant having immortal souls that live in the presence of God in a transcendent realm. That would be the significance of the resurrection and ascension, and it would be another distortion caused by the belief in a transcendent God. (For a defense of such a view, see Thomas Sheehan, 1986.)
Though ontological philosophy must deny that rational subjects have immortal lives as individuals, that does not mean that its immanent God is any less worthy of worship than the traditional Christian God. It merely reflects the difference in what rational beings really want that comes from understanding the nature of existence.
In a world constituted by space and matter, the immortality of bodily existence is not a good thing. Rational subjects who understand their nature ontologically as inevitable products of evolution by reproductive causation will not want to be immortal as individual multicellular animals. They will recognize that the desire to have an immortal soul is a form of narcissism, an unhealthy kind of "selfishness."
It is possible to extend lives, and that will be done, because it is good. Life is not currently long enough to make the most of it. And it will probably also be possible to make the body immortal in the sense that it will not die of old age or disease, but only by accident. But it would not be good to make the body immortal, because the natural perfection of the rational subject as an individual requires a temporal limit to life.
The life of an individual is a process of growth. She starts out as a baby, only later acquiring the capacity for reflection, and she goes through a process of development and growth that continues throughout life, until death. What makes the maximum holistic power of the multicellular animal holistic is that it controls all the conditions that affect reproduction over the whole cycle. That is the way to make the most of the least in the case of the individual animal. The parts that fit together as such an optimal whole are mainly the rational actions that make up the life as a four-dimensional object, and the individual gains power to control relevant conditions in the process of growing older. One acquires practical wisdom as time is running out. The self one constructs is like a painting, as I suggested earlier, that is painted from left to right on the canvas, trying to make the most of every part of the life. That each moment make its own essential contribution to the perfection of the whole -- that is, that it not be redundant -- is a essential aspect of the structure of the natural perfection of the individual animal. If life did not terminate at some point, there would be no whole of which the parts are all parts and thus no possibility of a natural perfection about it.
Or to put it negatively, growth is such an essential part of the structure of the natural perfection of individual life that the worst hell that a reflective subject with ontological reason could imagine is to have grown as much as possible for beings of her kind and yet be unable to die. Even if she were in perfect health and in possession of her faculties, it would become boring to go on living, because in a world made of space and matter, there is a limit to how much an rational subject can do and learn and enjoy. After she had passed that limit far enough, it would be torture to wake up each day and know that it would just another repetition of something already experienced many times before. Fortunately, such a condition is not possible for rational subjects with behavior guidance systems based on brains.
God’s transcendence of the natural world. Christians believe that God transcends the natural world, and that
seems to be an aspect of traditional theology that ontological philosophy
must deny. But transcendence is not relevant to God's worthiness of worship,
for it is simply what Christians had to believe in order to believe that God
is responsible for their own existence and the source of purpose in the world.
Ontological philosophy makes it possible to see God as the creator in the
latter sense without transcending the natural world.
Christian believe that God created the natural world out of nothing. It is the role of God as the Father to call into existence by an act of will the natural world and the teleological order it involves, including human beings. But if God as the Father is the basic nature of a spatiomaterial world like ours, as ontological philosophy implies, God is still the source of human beings and all the purpose in the world. That is, God is still the creator of the natural world in the relevant sense, and thus, such an immanent God is no less worthy of worship than the transcendent God of traditional Christian theology.
An immanent God cannot create the world as act of will. But the world can, and does, by the very nature of what exists in it, give rise to the existence of rational beings like us. It is our “creator” in the sense of being the source of our existence. To be sure, since we are a necessary consequence of its nature, we are not something done from the knowledge of the nature of goodness, that is, created as an act of free will. But the nature of the world gives rise to us as part of the process by which it gives rise to natural perfection and a real difference between good and bad in the world. Thus, even though God is not a substance existing outside space and time that gives rise to a world of objects in space that change through time, God turns out to be the cause of our human world and the source of real difference between good and bad. Hence, an immanent God is no less awesome. Nor is such an immanent God any less beneficent, that is, “good-doing,” though, of course, He cannot be benevolent, that is, “good-willing,” except through God’s self creation as a perfect rational being.
Simply being immanent does not make God any less a perfect rational being than a transcendent God. To be sure, an immanent God does not know as much and is not as powerful as it seems a transcendent God would be. But that does not make an immanent God any less worthy of worship, because it does not imply that an immanent God is inferior to a transcendent God. It is merely a difference is the conception of perfection that comes from one's conception of the nature of existence. The kind of perfect knowledge and power that is conceivable in a substance that exists outside space and time is different from the kind of perfect knowledge and power that is conceivable in something made of space and matter in time. But that does not show that one is better than the other, for it is just a question of which ontology is true of the actual world.
Finally, if there is a difference in perfection, there is one way in which an immanent God is more perfect than a transcendent God. Both are alike in having something permanent and unchanging about them. A transcendent God is unchanging because He outside of time, whereas an immanent God is unchanging because He is constituted by substances that endure through time with the same essential natures and they inevitably give rise to perfect rational beings. But since a transcendent God is outside time, He cannot change at all. Thus, He lacks at least one perfection that an immanent God can have, namely, the natural perfection of change itself. When evolution is change in the direction of natural perfection, as we have seen, each moment in the existence of the world makes a unique and necessary contribution to the existence of a perfect rational being in the world. Time is another way in which parts may be combined optimally as a whole, and a transcendent God is deprived of it.
God’s transcendence of the natural world is not, therefore, what makes Him worthy of reverence. Rather, transcendence marks Him as the God of epistemological philosophy. Though Christianity inherited the belief that God is the creator of the natural world from Judaism, His transcendence of the natural world is explained in Christian theology in a way that depends on Western philosophy. Ever since Augustine, at least, it has been explained in terms of Plato’s dualism of Becoming and Being (albeit by way of its transformation into a more idealist, neo-Platonist metaphysics by Plotinus). Plato first used the dichotomy between naturalistic and subjectivistic understanding (together with the radically different phenomenal appearances of the objects of each form of understanding) to explain what is good in the natural world as deriving from a supernatural source. And deriving from a form of metaphysical dualism that results from the epistemological approach to philosophy, it is not surprising that the belief in a transcendent God leads to serious theoretical problems. The problems are all solved by ontological theology.
The Problem of Proving God's Existence. The most immediate problem of traditional theology is proving God's existence. The dualism entailed by realism in epistemological philosophy usually leads, as we have seen, to doubts about realism, or anti-realism, and in the case of Christian theism, that means atheism. The transcendence of God makes it impossible to prove His existence from within space and time. But it is possible, as we have seen, to prove the existence of an immanent God, for this is a spatiomaterial world of the right kind.
The metaphysical dualisms of epistemological philosophy are inherently problematic. Plato could not explain adequately how two such different substances as Being and Becoming are related as parts of the same world. Christianity escapes being embarrassed by that problem only by insisting that the relationship is just part of the mystery about God. Though as persons (or rational beings), we are supposed to be created in the image of God, we are finite rational beings, and thus, we must simply accept the mystery and have faith in God. But the mysteriousness of God cannot, as such, make God worthy of worship. At best, the mystery merely leaves the possibility that God will turn out to be holy. And at worst, it is a mask that could just as well be worn by an evil or contemptible being and faith could be our undoing.
The Problem of God's Foreknowledge. Nor does the dualism of God and nature escape the theoretical problems inherent in a Platonic metaphysics. For example, God, being perfect, is supposed to be omniscient, as well as omnipotent and absolutely good. But since He exists outside of time as the creator of the natural world, He creates all the moments in the history of the natural world at once, including everything that finite rational beings ever do. Thus, God must already know what each individual will choose in each situation she faces. But that is hard to reconcile with the belief that individuals have a free will and that what becomes of us and the world is the result of our doing it. The future is not open. It is always already determined what we will do. Thus, God’s foreknowledge of what will happen seems to deny that rational subjects are free to choose in the way they think they are.
No such problem arises from the belief that God is immanent,
even though God is still a perfect rational being, including omniscience,
because knowing everything that it is possible to know as a rational being
constituted space and matter does not include knowing what every rational
being will ever do. It is possible to know what individuals have done in the
past. And it is possible to know what will happen in the long run because
of global regularities. But there are no necessary truths about what rational
beings will choose in particular situations. That is among the contingent
details that can be known only through experience of the world. (Nor is there
any reason to believe that actual choices can be predicted by knowing how
the bits of matter constituting a rational subject are moving and interacting.)
In any case, since what exists are substances that endure through time, the
future is open in the sense that it depends on what we choose to do (along
with what else is happening at the time). Thus, the belief in an immanent
God solves the traditional problem about God’s omniscience imply foreknowledge
of our choices.
Nothing that Christians must give up, if they accept the foundation of ontological philosophy and accepts the necessary truths that follow from it, shows that the immanent God entailed by spatiomaterialism is any less worthy of worship than their traditional God. What changes is one's conception of the nature of existence, and that has implications about the nature of perfection that can be conceived in such a world. Thus, even though ontological philosophy must deny that God transcends the natural world, that does not mean that there is no perfect being, for as it turns out in a spatiomaterial world like ours, the world itself is as perfect a perfect being as can be conceived to be made of space and matter. And that perfect being is demonstrably worthy of worship, if the God of traditional Christian theology is. Indeed, ontological theology would have to include the doctrine of the trinity, quite apart from Christian theology, because the ultimate perfection of the world comes from how perfect rational subjects have three kinds of self interest: individual, spiritual and religious. Far from denying the doctrine of original sin, ontological philosophy clarifies what it is. With that clarification of original sin is, it not only confirms the Christian belief about the meaning of life being the struggle to overcome sin, but it points the way to overcoming it. Salvation is surely no less valuable for being achieved by reason rather than by faith. The denial of personal immortality may seem to be a sticking point for some, but the desirability of immortality is an illusion that comes from failing to recognize the basic nature of the life of individual reflective subjects, for when it is understood ontologically, its natural perfection precludes immortality. Indeed, it would be hell, and as it turns out, there is no hell, according to ontological theology.
If, therefore, the Christian God is worthy of worship, the perfect rational being that the world turns out to be, according to ontological philosophy, is no less worthy of worship. On the contrary, the insights into the nature of God make Him more worthy of worship. Not only is it possible to know about God without a leap of faith, but it is possible for reason to know what work it is that needs to be done in the name of God.
