Metaphysics And the Idea of God

Metaphysics is one of the earliest philosophy. In today time, however, in the post-metaphysical world of our time, many people try to throw the old metaphysics out of window. Post-Metaphysics/After-Metaphysis is simply physic without "meta" (Beyond). And Scientism, Semanticism and neo-kantianism are who are in fore front to oppose metaphysics. In history, Aristotle, perhaps was the one who famously says that Metaphysics as the first philosophy. Metaphysics in the most simplest form is the study of nature of reality. Perhaps, we can also say the foundation of all other things for it try to grasps the nature of the first cause, in which Aristotle claim as First Unmoved Mover or the other ancient term, prote arche. 

But talking about studying the nature of reality as the basic definition of Metaphysics, here, we can see a quite overlap between Science and Metaphysics. They both studying reality but, if science more into How or talking about mechanisms of things then metaphysics is dealing more with why of things, in which is beyond the realm and scope of science to answer. Simple example, if we stated this statement, there is a sky. Science are unable to answer, why there is a sky? or why the universe began to exists. In mechanical world is no use to asked about purpose and meaning. If they claim so, then they are entering into the realm of metaphysics out of ignorance as E. J. Lowe argue in his book that "All empirical sciences presupposes metaphysics." Jack Maden also says in his article that indeed, many problem in science such as free-will, consciousness and what causation is, are metaphysical in nature. 

In the realm of Theology, there were also various rejections for Metaphysics after the reign  and heyday of empirical science. Yet, nowadays many movement try to revive as well the importance of metaphysics. One of the vital key of showing how metaphysics of the world is truly needed in the relation to God is through the concept of one and many, the unity of all things. Kant argue that the thing that hold the unity of the world must be different from the world. The transcendental unity of the consciousness, he would depict. The world only phenomenologically appear to us (Phenomena), therefore we really cannot understand the reality as in itself (Noumena). Although the higher realm of Noumena existed, for Kant, hat transcendental world is beyond grasp of the mind and unknowable. 

Moreover, any idea of finitude in the world already presupposes the infinity. The attempt to dig deeper on the nature of finitude  (The negation of finitude) will bring person to a religious consciousness as they found that the infinity should stand as the ground and stand a priori. In the third Meditations, Descartes famously prove the point as he reflect, "And I must not imagine that I do not conceive infinity as a real idea...on the contrary, I see manifestly that there is more reality in infinite substance than in finite substance, and my notion of infinite is somehow prior to that of finite, that is, the notion of God is prior to that of myself." (Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditation; MED III; 23-24).

Wolfhart Pannenberg agree that pondering the infinity shared some light to the idea of God but only in "identical sense" (identical to Absolute) but does not bring us closer to the "identity of God", likewise, the idea of perfection of Anselm also fall short in the same category of infinity argument. For Pannenberg, the identity of God can only be disclosed through the means of various religious traditions. However, this can be a good context in which metaphysics stand as a ground that unify multitude things in the world and reality. We cannot understand reality and its unity apart from the concept of the one and the absolute, and the infinity. Although the Metaphysics of Absolute, so to speak begins to explicate the concept of God, the impersonal absolute but not the identity of God. Therefore, to build the case of  the identity of God, we need the Revelation from God and the modes of faith to enter to a deeper and greater disclosure of the experience of the absolute as Gregory of Nyssa best expressed it: 

"We felt ourselves overwhelmed with vertigo, staring over the edge of cliff as it were, into what seemed at first glance to be an abyss of total emptiness and nothingness which extended downwards forever-or what seemed like nothingness until the little flash begin to appear in our minds of new insight, novel discoveries, and flowing stream of courage and calm which never existed before." 

If Metaphysics is stand as a transcendental foundation of reality, it cannot be overthrown by science. For by doing it so, then science become reductive. The transcendental nature of reality cannot be coming from the natural object and make it bigger enough to ground all other reality as Barth once commented that we cannot create God by speaking of man in a loud voice. There must be a ground of reality, metaphysically speaking, that is beyond the nature which in some extend is not affected by the law of nature, and providing a fundamental causal consequences that bring succeeding events.