The
notion of a substance found in ancient Greek philosophy and later in scholastic
thought in the middle ages, is based on the idea of substantia, that is
some essence that exists on its own, independent of other things, and
unchangeable. A substance is the underlying reality that gives support to
attributes or qualities and unifies them into a single thing. The idea is that reality has an objective
quality, something robust, independent and stable in spite of the variety and
change we experience. Attributes are
changeable whereas substances are that which is constant through change, this
helps us explain how the tree outside remains the same tree through the
changing seasons and its growth to maturity.
Also attributes are not fixed to a spatio-temporal location, the same
attribute can crop up in many places at once so that comparisons can be made
between different, but similar objects.
Since attributes can be in many places at once there is a need for a
centre around which attributes can be unified into a single object. Thus substance provides an answer to the question
why properties do not just fall off and scatter, but are instead collected into
the unity of an object. A final
consideration that invites the idea of substance is that there are centres of
force which have the active power to initiate change in itself or in others.
First
we should say that notions of centres of force have been superseded by modern
physics so that substance no longer plays a role in the natural sciences.
Nevertheless we can still see that philosophy needs to account for constancy
amidst change and unity amidst diversity, why not here appeal to the notion of
substance? It seems that christian philosophers are often attracted to the
notion of substance and we will deal later with the main application of this
concept in Christian thought to the problem of body-soul dualism. For now we
make three brief criticisms. First the
notion of substance is a reification, that is it takes a theoretical
abstraction to be a real thing. Second it cannot do justice to the relational
and temporal character of reality. Thirdly the notion of substance relativises
the religious relation of dependence on God.
We explain each in turn.
We
can only arrive at the notion of substance, as an underlying reality (substantia)
behind the changeable phenomena of the world (accidentia), through
theoretical abstraction. While in
experience we are familiar with both constancy and change, we never experience
one without the other, so we cannot say that we experience some entity that is
distinct from all change and that lies behind it. This abstraction only exists
as an artefact of our logical thinking about cosmic reality. The problem is
that this theoretical concept is projected back onto reality, as if this
abstraction – this distinction between substantia and accidentia
– did not exist as a result of our thinking but also in cosmic reality as such.
Whereas
the first criticism focuses on the role of our thinking in arriving at the
notion of a substance before projecting this back on reality the second comes
from the side of the reality being abstracted.
What we have with substance, or the closely related idea of essence, is
an entity that is cut off from the full, immanent relationships and coherences
in which we experience things (see §§21-23).
Since only some qualities of the thing, be it an apple, a flower or a
human person, will be considered essential the result is a loss of
reality. This is even more the case when
substance is taken as a bare support or substratum for all of a thing’s
qualities as in John Locke’s famous phrase “substance or
something-I-know-not-what”. Reality is lost because it is thoroughly
relational, nothing exists in and of itself except God, all else depends on
their creator, to cut a thing off from this relationality is to denude it.
So
thirdly the notion of substance can be opposed on the basis of the Christian
confession that reality, that is creation, only exists within the power of God
in Christ, who “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3)
and in whom “all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). A consequence of this
is that there is nothing in creation that can be found to be what all else in
creation depends on for existence. To this line of thought it may be objected
that by emphasising the complete dependence of all things on God we end up
seriously threatening the integrity and goodness of creation. This could not be
further from the truth! As we have just been indicating it is the notion of
substance that cuts off things from their full interconnected reality, it is
reformational philosophy that begins always with the affirmation of the
goodness of creation. The issue at stake in this third criticism is the
rejection of any hierarchy of being, or any reductionist strategy that assigns
a semi-absolutised position to some element of creaturely reality.
Reformational philosophy wishes to speak up here for an equality of being, and
join with Gregory Palamas in claiming “The Christian can tolerate no mediating
substance between God and creatures…”
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