[Ar] This question doesn’t even interest me, friend. I don’t believe in any of this triune godhead nonsense. I believe in studying things empirically and reaching careful, scientifically supportable deductions based upon hypothesis, observation, and either validation or refutation of the hypothesis (“Aristotle”).
[Au] Whoa there, buddy! You don’t believe in “any of this godhead nonsense”? I thought you believe in a whole pantheon of gods, twelve major ones on Mt. Olympus and however many minor ones that are subject to their whims—plus a whole host of demigods and heroes who are semi-divine children of unions among these gods and their human conquests. Tell me: what evidence do you have for these gods on Mt. Olympus? It sounds to me like a bunch of unsustainable fantasy, yet you talk about hypotheses and evidence!
[Aq] I think that both of you are all wet. This isn’t about twelve gods on Mt. Olympus, or about vague mysteries of three persons who are equal, albeit one had to be created by the other. This is about the simple reality of a creator that established the universe and is responsible for everything in it. Look: you like to argue about things by saying that it’s an infinite chain, that something comes from something, and it goes on forever, so there’s no need to determine “first causes.” My first problem is that time elapses between when a thing appears and when its consequent appears. You can’t subdivide this into however many intervals and then argue, like Zeno the Stoic, that his proverbial arrow can’t move because infinity times zero yields something finite. If a chain of cause and effect exists, no matter how lengthy it is, it has to start somewhere (Aquinas 4ff.). The universe simply couldn’t have arisen by itself, because it had to come from somewhere. Are you comfortable identifying that “somewhere” as anything other than God, the ineffable, the majestic, the transcendent?
[Ar] Hold on, we know how the universe started. It came out of nothingness. Then, there were Erebus and Nox. Then, there were Ouranos and Gaia. Then, there were the Titans and the Hekatonchires and such. Then, there were . . .
[Aq] . . . What!! What is this nonsense! You claim to operate by empirical observation and thoughtful deduction, yet you’re just accepting on faith that all these characters existed and that they somehow whipped up the universe? Where did they come from in order to be able to create this universe in the first place?
[Au] Don’t be so rough on my Aristotelian friend. You can’t expect the utmost consistency to apply to everything, everywhere, for all time. There remain things that we cannot explain. One of the foremost of these is the will of God and how man is or is not subject to it.
[Aq] Actually, it seems to me that man is obviously subject to it, since it must be the will of God that created this cosmos. From that, it follows that God ordains, establishes, and directs all things.
[Ar] How do you know this? And if it’s true, then how can you divine God’s will? In particular, how do you know whether God wants you just to accept this foolishness by edict or somehow to think, to reason, to deduce?
[Aq] Isaiah tells us that the ways of the Lord are not our ways and that the thoughts of the Lord are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8). Clearly, it is not for us even to try to understand the subtleties of the Lord’s creation or our role in it.
[Au] I’ll tell you what, friends. Let’s recognize that not one of us truly understands the nature of the creation. Even St. Augustine did a fair amount of waffling before graduating from cause-and-effect Platonism to the truth of the Christian worldview (“Saint Augustine”). Our Aristotelian friend is doing the best he can to reconcile the cultural strictures and prejudices with which he was raised with an overarching sense of illumination, a drive to impart order to the world by scientific rationality. Are we to criticize him for his deficiencies or to praise him for his nobility of intent?
[Aq] True it is that we can rebuke our neighbor but cannot suffer evil upon him (Leviticus 19:17). I fear we are straying close to the suffering evil part of that doctrine. True it is also that the Lord Jesus Christ, by and through our teacher St. Paul, teaches us not to lay stumbling blocks or other hindrances before our neighbor (Romans 14:13), but to regard him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). Let us simply enjoy our ales and agree to contemplate the wonders of the universe, each according to the limits of his mental capabilities as dictated by the specifics of his own personal understanding of the order of things.