Aristotle’s ideas were based on the pagan mythology of his people. For him, if there were gods, they were no morally different from people. They were immortal and had extraordinary powers, but could be just as unreasonable as mortals. Thus, reason was superior to gods; men could reason and generally ignore them. There may well be divine revelation, but it was untrustworthy.
We see this in the Eden narrative as a lie, where Satan suggests that Jehovah wasn’t telling the whole truth about the Tree of Knowledge. In Aristotle’s universe, there was no room for a perfect god nor a perfect creation. Only reason could be perfect, and that was within reach of humans.
In Scripture, a term translated typically as “this world” or “this generation” refers to the fallen nature of humanity. That is, Creation is about as perfect as it can be, and only human nature is broken. But the effect of that brokenness forces nature into restrictions that aren’t what God intended. It would be impossible in human terms to describe what will change at the Final Revelation, but it doesn’t require anything more than removal of all those who remain unredeemed. Get rid of that and nature is free to be like Eden again. The whole earth can be the Garden of God.
Thus, we are encouraged to stay in this realm of existence but to escape the ravages of our fallen nature. We don’t cease to be fallen, but we do take on a layer of moral clarity that simply isn’t possible without spiritual birth. We are able to discern in our hearts that nature is alive, sentient and willful, from the whole down to the smallest element. And through this realization, we are able to sense the true living Personhood of God Himself. Christ becomes a someone we know, rather than a rarefied ideal.
But it remains our default to be stuck with the fallen nature. So we have to exercise the grace and mercy to keep our awareness outside the limitations of our minds. We have to choose by faith to credit revelation as a valid input and make our decisions based on things we could not prove via sensory data or reason. Unlike Aristotle’s universe, our God is morally perfect and not confined to our level of existence. Our best hope is not simply struggling for objectivity, which is impossible in the first place. Our best hope is the awakening of something in us far higher than reason and generally separate from our senses.
