A Fractal Theory of Everything

For those of my readers who don’t know what a fractal is, this short video explains it in a very compact and non-technical way, and I highly recommend you see that video before you read the rest of this post. I was talking with my father about fractals, and he alerted me to the explanatory powers of fractals. His idea was that no matter how small we go in quantum particles, there always seems to be a smaller kind of particle that makes up the next layer down. So my father theorized that atoms are fractals and that the number of particles one could find is actually endless. Then he combined that theory with the macro level in astrophysics. No matter how far out we go in space, there will always be more to explore. In other words, the universe has fractals in its DNA code on both the micro and the macro level. Mind you, this is only a theory!

I immediately started thinking of the way I had been studying history recently. I used to read generalist history books that were supposed to give me a grand feel for the scope of everything. I found them unutterably dull and boring, because they never adequately explained cause and effect for specific events. So I decided to switch my tactics and read enormous tomes about small events, to see if I could actually learn something about smaller fields of historical knowledge. I found the books infinitely more satisfying to read. I felt that I was really learning something.

All that about history is background to this paragraph. What I have discovered is that history is enormously more complicated than anyone likes to think. Even to describe the major causes why something happens involves enormous research. All historical writing inevitably over-simplifies the cause and effect relationships. Suppose that over-simplification is also infinite? Suppose the causation for any given act of history is actually a fractal? Certainly, cause and effect would go backwards in time to the very beginning. However, wouldn’t it also branch out going backwards? Can we say that a given event only had one cause without that cause being caused by a whole complex of further causes? Wouldn’t causation itself branch out in a fractal manner?

It doesn’t take much of a science fiction boost to this idea to see how it works in forward historical progress. As most people know, a very small change in present circumstances can drastically change the future. The possible futures branch out in a seemingly fractal way as well.

Then I thought about knowledge itself. Knowledge has been fragmenting ever since the Enlightenment. Kant wanted to separate the world of faith from the world of knowledge. In Kant’s world, there is a ceiling that prevents the noumenal world from being known (Kant rejected the idea of revelation, the noumenal world revealing itself to the phenomenal world). But if theology is not the queen of the sciences, as it was in the Middle Ages, then knowledge becomes very fragmented. Suppose, however, that knowledge itself is a sort of fractal? Obviously, it couldn’t be a fractal in the physical sense. However, if knowledge has a fractal-like aspect to it, then we can expect the specialization of disciplines to go on ad infinitum. Certainly, this would be true in the STEM fields if reality itself is fractal. If reality is fractal, then our knowledge of it would be so also. If we reject Kant’s construction, however, then the noumenal world is open to knowledge as well. God can reveal Himself to us, and we can know Him.

On this understanding of the physical world, the historical world, and the world of knowledge, there would be a super-fractal that connects these three worlds together. I believe that super-fractal is the Bible. It binds all knowledge, all history, and the physical universe together. If I am right about the Bible, then there will always be more in the Bible to discover, since it itself is a fractal. It will always have the same general shape of revelatory word following and explaining creationary or redemptive deed on God’s part. However, our understanding of that revelation will always be refining itself, not into something complete different, but in a deeper understanding of the same truths once for all revealed to the saints.

A Van Til-Clark Discussion on Archetypal-Ectypal Knowledge

I am not going to get into a discussion of the interpretation of the Van Til-Clark debate, and whether they were talking past each other or not. I am only going to address a small part of the discussion, namely, the difference between archetypal and ectypal knowledge, and whether this forms an area of common ground between God and man.

First, some definitions are in order. The archetypal/ectypal knowledge distinction is not by any means original with Van Til. It comes from Protestant Scholasticism. For instance, see the first few chapters of Markius’ Compendium Theologiae Christianae. Archetypal knowledge is the knowledge that God has. Ectypal knowledge is the knowledge that creatures have. The scholastics usually divided ectypal knowledge into the knowledge of angels and humans. Then human knowledge was further subdivided into the knowledge of man at creation, the knowledge of man as distorted by the Fall, the knowledge of the pilgrim, the knowledge of the blessed (glorified in heaven), and the knowledge of Christ as the God-man, Who had two knowledges, if you will, the archetypal knowledge of God according to the divine nature, and the knowledge of the hypostatic union as the God-man.

One of the points at issue, and the one most controverted, is whether God’s knowledge and man’s knowledge coincide at any point. Usually those of the Clarkian persuasion will say that of course it must coincide, or else we are doomed to complete skepticism and we cannot know anything correctly. Those who follow Van Til believe that such a coinciding would violate the Creator-creature distinction. Sometimes a quantitative/qualitative distinction is introduced here as well. Those of the Clarkian persuasion would say that God knows a greater number of thoughts than we do, but that there are at least some thoughts that God and man have in common. To put it in its most forceful way, wouldn’t God have to know all ectypal knowledge in order to be omniscient? If we look at a pencil, and can agree that a human knowledge of a pencil might extend to its molecular structure, wouldn’t God also have to know the way in which we know the pencil in order to be omniscient? Wouldn’t there be overlap precisely at that point between God’s knowledge and man’s knowledge? Van Til and his followers would claim that there is a qualitative distinction between God’s knowledge and man’s knowledge just as there is a qualitative difference between God’s being and our being.

So what am I adding to this conversation? I believe that there is a way beyond the forceful way of putting things that I mentioned. It has to do with the atomization of knowledge implied in Clark’s way of thinking. By putting the matter in quantitative terms, God’s thoughts, while infinite in number, are thought of as building blocks. They are discrete points in a matrix, if you will, that extend infinitely in all directions. But God’s knowledge cannot be atomized in this way. If Van Til is correct in his analysis of facts having both substance and context, then the holistic context of all things (and by this context I am NOT positing some sort of higher reality to which both God and creation belong), including Himself, is always the context for God knowing all things, including His knowledge of ectypal knowledge. We cannot atomize God’s knowledge of ectypal knowledge from the rest of God’s knowledge. That context is one that humans will never and can never share, since that context would include God Himself in all His fullness. God’s knowledge is whole, just like His being is a simple whole. The simplicity of God prevents our dividing God into pieces. Therefore, His knowledge must be likewise one whole.

So this formulation of things must also answer the objection: how can our knowledge be true at all? Are we doomed to skepticism? The answer is a simple no, because of God’s self-revelation to us in both nature and Scripture. We would be doomed to skepticism if God did not reveal Himself to us, because then we would have no test of knowledge given to us by God. This would also answer the possible charge that we have descended into Kantianism (the idea that we cannot know anything in the noumenal realm, but only believe). If God did not choose to reveal Himself to us, then we would indeed know nothing. However, revelation is God’s way of ensuring that we can know things rightly, even if in a limited creaturely way. God’s revelation is an anchor that tethers all human knowledge.

The other objection that must be answered is this: is God’s knowledge then the all-encompassing whole that everything belongs to? Do we lapse into a form of idealism by saying this? Again the answer is no, simply because God’s knowledge is distinct from creation itself, just as God’s being is distinct from creation. We cannot separate epistemology from ontology in our thinking.

Response to Gerety

Sean Gerety has written a blog post wherein he attacked my blog post quotation of Berkhof in the following way:

It’s hard to imagine a more vicious attack on the integrity of the Scriptures and the Reformed system of faith than what Keister has written above.

Gerety expounds this attack by saying the following:

If the Scriptures were irrational and violated the laws of logic, specifically the law of contradiction, would they still be trustworthy? I don’t see how? Yet, for Keister reason is not a tool by which we can discover the trustworthiness of Scripture and he confuses the laws of logic with errors in logic due to sin.

I would simply say this: go back to the original post and see if I was saying that we can’t prove the Scriptures to be correct. I was NOT saying that we do not apprehend the Scriptures by use of our reason, fallen though it is (the Holy Spirit is required for us to understand the Scriptures: this is God’s answer to correcting fallen human reason). There is a big difference between apprehending (Gerety’s word is “discover”) God’s word by use of reason (which I think is essential), versus proving God’s Word is true by the use of reason (which I believe is impossible).

Let it also here be said unequivocally that I believe that all logic and infallible reason belong to God, and there is not one single contradiction in all of Scripture. Indeed, God, through Scripture, has given us the very source of logical and rational thinking.

The problem here is that Gerety equates my statement of the limited, derivative nature of our reason (which requires an external starting point precisely in order to be valid!) with irrationality. The only thing I was saying in the post (and what Berkhof was saying, as well!) is that Scripture is our starting point, and that we cannot prove a starting point, any more than we can build a foundation under another foundation. The proof is in the pudding, shall we say, and the pudding is one hundred percent logical, when God and Scripture are our starting points.

My questions for Gerety are simple: would Gerety claim that human reason is more foundational to our thinking than God’s Word is? I thought God’s Word WAS truth, the very definition and encapsulation of truth. God’s Word is the very thing that enables us to think truly logically and rationally. Second question: does sin affect fallen man’s logic and rationality at all? I thought human beings were depraved in every aspect of their being, the mind included. Now, I do not claim that unbelievers are incapable of agreeing with a logical proposition. There is such a thing as common grace. However, if Scripture is not the alpha point, the omega point is irrationality. The unbeliever will always start from the wrong place. If you start in the wrong place (i.e., with false premises), then the conclusion will be wrong as well.

In conclusion, I do not believe I have issued any attack whatsoever on the Christian faith, or the Reformed faith, let alone one than which a more vicious attack could scarcely be imagined. Since Gerety is banned from this blog, he will need to respond on his own blog.