“What is the New Creation…?”
Discussions on this topic are of theology, and as human beings we will exercise our reason and intellect. When we discuss God, we are undertaking theological discussions. Theology is the science of religion and the way arguments may be constructed (via speculative philosophy), on matters pertaining to particular conceptions of God. The following summary is fairly typical …“theology may deal with dogmatic ascertains, or may be natural theology, or consist of arguments about God. Such activities include writings ranging from those of St. Aquinas, to the 20th-century theologians, such as Karl Barth. Theologians have endeavoured to construct theology as a science that radically differed from the natural and the human sciences because its ultimate subject, God, was not accessible to empirical investigation. Aquinas included in his theological system five proofs for the existence of God. Barth considered God’s freedom and revelation (communication of himself), as providing the understanding of God. In this way Barth believes one may avoid the danger of approaching God as an object of investigation”.
Even if we agreed that we avoid considering God as an object for empirical investigation, we cannot reason that revelation may be within a range of phenomena that are human potentialities or of the human senses. We have ruled out objective-based activities such as found in the natural sciences. Revelation cannot be defined in a way that philosophy or science may argue and consider within the ideas of reason.
For revelation to be valid, the person being revealed unto needs to be able to respond, to reason, and to consider the revelation within his (context of) life. The meaning of God needs to be completely comprehensible. Since I understand all human life and reason to be within the freedom of birth, freedom of life, and freedom of thought (intent), revelation is also understood within freedom. The unreasonable part of the human condition is lack of freedom that finds its ultimate unreasonable condition in death.
The goodness of life is within the completeness of life and the resulting continuation of life. Revelation is that God reveals himself within the possibilities of the goodness of life and its continuation; revelation is presented to human beings within such goodness and revealed things become meaningful. Furthermore, because revelation is comprehended as goodness, it can be argued that this leads to an increase in reasonableness. Revelation is in harmony with reason and removes the antimony found in reason and may be said to add to the reasoning aspects of a human being. The possibilities within human beings regarding revelation arise from both the responses of reason to revelation, in that each person may respond according to his reason and heart, and also because revelation can be comprehended within the framework of life and death, thus within good and bad. The remarks concerning the idea(s) of god(s) and the capacity for human beings to conceptualise such entities within the context of human attributes, provides many possibilities that reason may ponder and consider as the meaning of god within the human context. Because of these many possibilities that confront reason, the necessity of faith naturally follows this discussion.
So while we should have a working understanding of major philosophical arguments, the theological content is what matters, and Berkley (and many other philosophers) understood this. The emphasis that I place to these arguments is the necessity of faith - this is especially relevant in this age of materialism/science, which appears to exclude perhaps the major aspects of what makes us human. Christ indeed took on human flesh and bone and we are also taught that we have the mind of Christ - able to discern spiritual matters as mature Christians.