Nature of reality, etc

This discussion Rustin and I started might seem out in left field, but I think it is just an expansion of the things the book talks about with Plato.  That's what I've been looking for. What is the nature of reality?  The book brings up the issues like the fact that Plato believed in the existence of souls, and the forms, etc.  Although he was obviously wrong on some points (at least I think), like reincarnation, and the idea of the forms has some problems, he was on to something.  

Rustin, in regard to your second paragraph, about causal loops, etc, I've never viewed "alpha and omega" as suggesting a causal loop.  I just think it means that God started the whole thing and he's in control.  He is as in control of the end as he was the beginning.  There will be a new beginning for sure, but it's not a restart from the old beginning.  Maybe I'm going somewhere else with this than you were, but the new creation will be better than Eden.  Eden was a good place, but it was corruptible.  As someone somewhere has said, a world that has fallen and been redeemed is better than a world that has never fallen.  My understanding of how the Jews have interpreted the idea of the new creation, the new covenant, etc, from an OT perspective, is that the new creation will be "Eden PLUS".   And the whole idea of loops, or cycles, reminds me of the ancient fertility religions that really were repeating cycles over and over.  Christ kind of put an end to that.  More on that later perhaps.

The things you said about the Trinity I largely agree with.  There is a lot there for future discussion.  Later in that paragraph you said "...suggest that I am a dualist but only until heaven comes to earth."  It doesn't seem possible to leave eschatology out of this, but I think there is definitely going to be a physical aspect to the New Heaven and New Earth, or at least the New Earth.

In the last main paragraph you said, "I guess I regard it as merely a modeling tool and of no "true" existence."  There is a lot of truth in that.  Physicists even recognize that things like electrons, protons, etc, probably don't really exist, at least as we portray them.  These things are models that explain the data better than any other model we currently have.  But when you apply that too broadly to all the  truths we think about, you are coming close to being a nominalist.  That is to say, immaterial and/or conceptual things like truth, or like categories, don't exist.  As advanced, sentient, rational beings we just invent categories and name things for our own purposes.  Take, for instance, the category of 'cats'.  A nominalist would say there really is nothing in reality that groups tigers and lions and cheetahs and house cats in the same group.  We just do that for our own convenience.  For that matter, any truths such as "husbands should be faithful to their wives" don't really exist, they are just creations of our own.  There is certainly a lot to be said in regard to that, and it also brings us right back to Plato.  The book talks about Plato's ideas of knowledge and belief being the opposite of what most people believe today.  I think Plato was right.  He thought true knowledge involved the immaterial world behind physical world.  That is where truth lies (not that I know 'where' that is).  Belief to him had to do with our ideas of the material world.  Taking the material world alone doesn't give you a very robust understanding of all of reality.

BTW, the alternative to nominalism is the belief in universals.  That is, there are concepts and ideas and truths that are 'universal' in the sense that they apply to everyone everywhere, all the time.  That is how we can say that Hitler was wrong, and not just that we happened to be personally opposed to him.  That also explains why categories such as fidelity/infidelity, courage/cowardice, honor/dishonor, exist in every culture.  Those categories are sometimes defined a little differently (what do you expect in a fallen world), but they always exist.

Argue with me at will.