A mere human being cannot discover the Transcendent

[Contarini]

No worries at all Edwin.

The Transcendent is indeed an alien world. We do not know what exists in there or the nature of beings that reside in that world.

All that my argument is claiming is that for one to even consider a person as being able to know the Transcendent therefore requires them to be from the Transcendent. For us to then be convinced that they are indeed from the Transcendent, they must produce us with some form of act that shows they capability over this world (or that they are not bound by this world).

Now is it possible that there are Transcendent beings that cannot bend the rules of this world? Yes, but if these are the only being that existed, we cannot ever know the Transcendent and frankly it is not worth our time i.e. A being that cannot have any power over this world wouldn’t be that important for our consideration anyway. We might as well spend the time to achieve immortality on earth.

As for whether what I said violates Christianity, it does not in the sense that everything said is reasonable for anyone who starts without Christianity. We cannot speak of an incarnation because that is a fact of FAITH. It is not an apriori discovered fact before assent but a fact that is accepted after assent.

So nothing here violates the Christian sentiments. In fact, everything I said will lie outside the boundaries of Christian doctrine since it deals with coming to know whether Christianity or any other religion is true/worthy of assent.

But in the first place, if as I’m arguing your “transcendent” isn’t really “transcendent” by the standards of historic Christian theology, then your use if the term is misleading.

Even more importantly, I just don’t see why your transcendent is that interesting or important.

And far more, if Jesus is just a being from another world, then He can’t save us and it would be idolatry to worship Him.

The “transcendent” isn’t a general category that happens to include God; it is a name for the reality of God which cannot apply to anything else. And it isn’t “alien” although it (or rather He) is the Wholly Other. God is both wholly Other and intimately present to all creation.

I’m not sure how much we actually disagree and how much we are just coming to the question from different angles.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

I think you misunderstand. The issue is not whether they claim they did miracles but given that they ACTUALLY DID MIRACLES.

The two individuals you listed have no credible historical sources to think the events ever happened.

So is God a scientific entity then? Is it true to say that in your thinking, one day we will find God through Science? It just hasn’t gotten there yet?

I won’t speak for “servant,” but I share his objection, and my reason is the opposite of the one you suggest: it seems to me that the picture of God you present falls in principle within the purview of science, whereas the reality of God does not.

Furthermore, without a pre-existing understanding of God, the concept of “miracle” is empty and irrelevant. It’s just a magic trick.

Jesus’ miracles mattered to Jews because they purported to be the work of the God Jews worshiped.

The miracles of the Apostles and the early Church mattered to pagans because they claimed to deliver people from the power of the evil demons and to surpass the miracles allegedly worked by the gods.

Miracles matter in context. Without a theological context, they’re just weird stuff that happens.

Edwin

 

[Jaberwocky]

I won’t speak for “servant,” but I share his objection, and my reason is the opposite of the one you suggest: it seems to me that the picture of God you present falls in principle within the purview of science, whereas the reality of God does not.

Furthermore, without a pre-existing understanding of God, the concept of “miracle” is empty and irrelevant. It’s just a magic trick.

Jesus’ miracles mattered to Jews because they purported to be the work of the God Jews worshiped.

The miracles of the Apostles and the early Church mattered to pagans because they claimed to deliver people from the power of the evil demons and to surpass the miracles allegedly worked by the gods.

Miracles matter in context. Without a theological context, they’re just weird stuff that happens.

But in the first place, if as I’m arguing your “transcendent” isn’t really “transcendent” by the standards of historic Christian theology, then your use if the term is misleading.

Even more importantly, I just don’t see why your transcendent is that interesting or important.

And far more, if Jesus is just a being from another world, then He can’t save us and it would be idolatry to worship Him.

The “transcendent” isn’t a general category that happens to include God; it is a name for the reality of God which cannot apply to anything else. And it isn’t “alien” although it (or rather He) is the Wholly Other. God is both wholly Other and intimately present to all creation.

I’m not sure how much we actually disagree and how much we are just coming to the question from different angles.

It seems to me that all your points are theological. I am afraid you are failing to notice that we are not dealing with theology here. This discussion is on the basis of assenting to a theological framework to begin with. Thus it is outside the jurisdiction of theology. Any criticism will therefore have to appeal to natural reason or empirical evidence.

Now if you do have an argument from natural reason against what I said, we can certainly discuss. Otherwise it profits neither me nor you for me to reply in detail on how to reconcile the theology with what I have said.

 

[Contarini]

It seems to me that all your points are theological. I am afraid you are failing to notice that we are not dealing with theology here. This discussion is on the basis of assenting to a theological framework to begin with. Thus it is outside the jurisdiction of theology. Any criticism will therefore have to appeal to natural reason or empirical evidence.

My points are not “theological” in the sense of depending on specific divine revelation. If that’s not what you mean by theological, then what do you mean?

Now if you do have an argument from natural reason against what I said, we can certainly discuss.

For starters, you haven’t defined “transcendent.” Therefore, I assumed that you intended by it something like what Christian theology means. I also assumed, naturally, that your argument fails if it does not point toward orthodox Christianity. Now you tell me that these assumptions are illegitimate.

But then you need to establish, by natural reason, what the “transcendent” is in the first place. What does it “transcend” exactly? And why believe it exists anyway? Why believe that an apparent resurrection from the dead is a message from some hitherto unimagined realm called the “transcendent,” which is enough like our own reality that a message from it would be intelligible and that we can formulate rules about what criteria might qualify someone as a messenger from such a realm?

If you establish simply that there is some other world peopled by powerful beings (or even just one such being) who can grant us immortality, then you have not established anything remotely like orthodox Christianity, but simply a kind of pagan mystery cult. You don’t have the groundwork for theology at all, just for empirical inquiry into the laws governing an alien realm.

Edwin

 

[Jaberwocky]

For starters, you haven’t defined “transcendent.” Therefore, I assumed that you intended by it something like what Christian theology means. I also assumed, naturally, that your argument fails if it does not point toward orthodox Christianity. Now you tell me that these assumptions are illegitimate.

By Transcendent it is assumed that which is beyond the empirical realm of knowledge including the fact whether or not there is something beyond the empirical realm of knowledge.

But then you need to establish, by natural reason, what the “transcendent” is in the first place. What does it “transcend” exactly? And why believe it exists anyway? Why believe that an apparent resurrection from the dead is a message from some hitherto unimagined realm called the “transcendent,” which is enough like our own reality that a message from it would be intelligible and that we can formulate rules about what criteria might qualify someone as a messenger from such a realm?

To be very strict here, the resurrection from the dead does not necessarily require one to believe that a Transcendent exist. But what it does do is give a reason to trust in Christ as someone knowledgeable than ourselves. So one is therefore reasonable if they chose to believe in everything he says from that point on.

If you establish simply that there is some other world peopled by powerful beings (or even just one such being) who can grant us immortality, then you have not established anything remotely like orthodox Christianity, but simply a kind of pagan mystery cult. You don’t have the groundwork for theology at all, just for empirical inquiry into the laws governing an alien realm.

The methodology is about discovering who to trust as knowing things regarding the Transcendent. If Albert Einstein were to say he knows the Transcendent, since his methods are based on empirical knowledge and he has not achieved something beyond what seems possible empirically or mathematically at this time, it would be unreasonable to believe in him.

But Christ who died and rose from the dead, would show that he can perform and has knowledge of something either far advanced from our current empirical discovery point or perhaps on something even beyond the empirical world.

 

[Skadi]

The topic I would like to discuss and encourage others to discuss is whether a mere human being can ever come to know the Transcendent by himself. I contend that it is impossible and even if they did, they will not know they have grasped the Transcendent.

I present the following argument

1. The knowledge attained directly by human being is through experience
2. The human being experiences through his five senses
3. To claim that a human being can experience the supernatural via another sense is in itself a religious claim that must be first proven/given reason to believe
4. It is impossible to give evidence or reasons for (3). Hence (3) is not possible.
5. Therefore, no human being can ever come to posses knowledge of the Transcendent unless it reveals itself to him

The second part of this argument would be to assert that this means any religious founder who claims to know the transcendent must always give proof that either

1. He has been contacted by a being from the Transcendent
2. Or that he himself is from the Transcendent world

Both of these mean that the person has to show miracles that are historically reliable (if we were not around at the time he was around). But that is for a different matter.

First I would like to see what the thoughts of people are on this matter. I was under the impression that the title should be obvious but I have encountered many who think its unreasonable to say such a thing. I would like to discuss that matter here.

This is a very interesting thread, i’ll keep watching. I do agree with most of what you say.

 

[Contarini]

By Transcendent it is assumed that which is beyond the empirical realm of knowledge including the fact whether or not there is something beyond the empirical realm of knowledge.

But anything we experience within the empirical realm of knowledge is, by definition, part of that realm. If you set up a closed circle by saying that the empirical has no access to the non-empirical, then even the resurrection of the dead would be, by definition, just a very strange event within the empirical universe.

I think what’s missing in your “prolegomena fidei” is a participationist metaphysics. In Aquinas, for instance, divine revelation does indeed transcend what the senses can experience. But sensory experience itself–indeed all reality–exists only by participating in the invisible reality “which all call God.” And only in that sort of context is the resurrection more than a “conjuring trick with bones.” We already know by reason, according to Aquinas, that there is a transcendent, even though there are severe limits to what reason can tell us about it.

It seems to me that you’re trying to make the Thomistic reason/revelation distinction without the participationist metaphysics that underlies St. Thomas’s “rational” understanding of the universe. And it won’t work.

The reason this is important in terms of apologetics and evangelism is that you wind up ruling out most of the really important evidence of the Transcendent we have, as in your discussion with Rossum, in which you accused him of being “uncritical” because he took Buddhist teaching’s capacity to transform him as evidence of its truth.

To be very strict here, the resurrection from the dead does not necessarily require one to believe that a Transcendent exist. But what it does do is give a reason to trust in Christ as someone knowledgeable than ourselves. So one is therefore reasonable if they chose to believe in everything he says from that point on.

I don’t see that at all. For one thing, in terms of our own empirical investigations as 21st-century people we don’t have access to the risen Jesus (not empirically, that is, unless you count Eucharistic miracles and apparitions). We have access to certain written documents which purport to record people’s encounters with Jesus. These documents are written in an ancient language and are shot through with all kinds of ancient cultural assumptions which we are unlikely to understand very well. We also have access to the continuous witness of the Church, which from a purely empirical point of view doesn’t count for much, although some of the early non-canonical records are certainly valuable in backing up what we have in the NT. That’s what we have. In the absence of moral/spiritual evidence such as the transforming power of the Holy Spirit or the beauty of the Sacraments, it’s not enough to form the basis of a reasonable belief that some reality outside the empirical has broken into our universe.

Furthermore, even for someone directly encountering the risen Jesus, a non-participationist metaphysic leaves no ground for the conclusions you want to draw. By definition the senses cannot perceive what the senses cannot perceive. And language is intrinsically sense-based. When Jesus says “in my Father’s house are many mansions,” that language necessarily evokes the image of physical houses in some kind of beautiful palace complex. The description of the heavenly Jerusalem at the end of Revelation is inescapably empirical. We can say that it’s describing non-empirical language in empirical terms, but only if we have a metaphysics that allows the empirical to express (however imperfectly) the non-empirical in the first place.

Also, as a general principle within the empirical universe, you don’t completely trust anyone as a witness. The basic rule for avoiding error within the empirical world is to double-check everything and examine everything critically. You propose that the evidence of the resurrection is enough reason to suspend this principle entirely. I don’t see it, especially given that you and I don’t even have direct evidence to the resurrection in the first place.

Edwin

 

[Jaberwocky]

But anything we experience within the empirical realm of knowledge is, by definition, part of that realm. If you set up a closed circle by saying that the empirical has no access to the non-empirical, then even the resurrection of the dead would be, by definition, just a very strange event within the empirical universe.

Here lies an error.

To observe the resurrection while completely empirical does not in anyway suggest the mechanism is also empirical. So this is an error in your observation.

Secondly, as I mentioned before, there is no need for an assumption that Christ is about to speak or had spoken of Transcendent matters apriori to assent.

I don’t see that at all. For one thing, in terms of our own empirical investigations as 21st-century people we don’t have access to the risen Jesus (not empirically, that is, unless you count Eucharistic miracles and apparitions).

You are loading your argument here with multiple issues.

There are two issues in just the above part. One is the issue of reasonableness of assent GIVEN that the resurrection is true. The second is the issue of whether the resurrection is true.

As I think I made it clear among some of the posts, the second question is not my interest to discuss here. We can certainly do so if you like but on a different thread or after one issue has been resolved. Suffice it to say here that historical evidence does constitute as empirical evidence. Also suffice it to say that whether or not someone died and came back is an empirically observable phenomenon. Heck, one doesn’t even need any scientific instruments to verify that and ones own eyes would suffice.

But that is not the discussion here. The matter is whether after witnessing such a fiat being performed by a man, is it not reasonable to trust them as knowing something more. To me and I suspect for many, the answer would be a resounding YES. You feel that the answer is NO.

I can only ask whether you have ever trusted anyone else regarding a field of knowledge that you have not discovered or studied yourself and as to what criterion you used to think that person authoritative on the matter. Most people when asked this question would recognize that they did listen to someone who had DEMONSTRATED a mastery of the skill or knowledge that they want to possess.

So for a reasonable individual, given that Christ rose from the dead is true, it would be good enough reason to want to learn what he has to say at least from the perspective of discovering how to live eternally themselves.

 

[Servant19]

In the absence of moral/spiritual evidence such as the transforming power of the Holy Spirit or the beauty of the Sacraments, it’s not enough to form the basis of a reasonable belief that some reality outside the empirical has broken into our universe.

Edwin

Edwin, thankyou

Jaberwocky, while all of Edwin’s post was wonderful, and I agree in its entirety, it is the parts that I quoted which is exactly what I am getting at.

The true miracle is in the workings of the Holy Spirit, which Catholics believe Jesus “breathed” into the physical universe, and Baha’is believe all the Founders of major global religions “breathed” into the universe.

This “breath” of the Holy Spirit brought about incredible material and spiritual advancements creating civilizations that cannot be denied in their validity.

 

[Servant19]

I can only ask whether you have ever trusted anyone else regarding a field of knowledge that you have not discovered or studied yourself and as to what criterion you used to think that person authoritative on the matter. Most people when asked this question would recognize that they did listen to someone who had DEMONSTRATED a mastery of the skill or knowledge that they want to possess.

Jaberwocky, on what basis do you trust the accounts of the Apostles?

And if you did have a valid reason to trust the Apostles, what makes you believe that ALL of the Bible which implies that it is historical IS in fact historical.

Spiritual truths can be relayed using examples of historical incidents, ESPECIALLY when you wish to portray Jesus as being the Messiah or Son of God to the unbelieving Jews and the skeptical Gentiles…

 

[Jaberwocky]

Edwin, thankyou

Jaberwocky, while all of Edwin’s post was wonderful, and I agree in its entirety, it is the parts that I quoted which is exactly what I am getting at.

The true miracle is in the workings of the Holy Spirit, which Catholics believe Jesus “breathed” into the physical universe, and Baha’is believe all the Founders of major global religions “breathed” into the universe.

This “breath” of the Holy Spirit brought about incredible material and spiritual advancements creating civilizations that cannot be denied in their validity.

I also have to reply to you as I did to Edwin then. The very statement that

“In the absence of moral/spiritual evidence such as the transforming power of the Holy Spirit or the beauty of the Sacraments, it’s not enough to form the basis of a reasonable belief that some reality outside the empirical has broken into our universe.”

it itself a theological belief. Apriori to assent, there can exists no concept of the Eucharist, Holy Spirit, Trinity or Sacraments. In fact, apriori to assent, there may even be no clear understanding that there is in fact a Transcendent.

So I beg you to re-read what I have written in this light. Start as if your own position is under critical assault without making apriori assumption of theological truths.

 

[Jaberwocky]

Jaberwocky, on what basis do you trust the accounts of the Apostles?

It is based on the historical verifiability that they did live within living memory of the event and that they did give their lives claiming witness to the resurrection. There is nothing more to ask from a person who has witnessed something that I personally haven’t than for them to be willing to give their lives up for it.

One or two persons would have been explainable as a psychological disease. But for almost all of them to die this way makes them trustworthy enough.

All you need to ask is, if you had witnessed a person die, rise from the dead and ascend in to heaven, what can you do to convince me that you are indeed telling the truth? I would say you can do nothing more than die for it.

And if you did have a valid reason to trust the Apostles, what makes you believe that ALL of the Bible which implies that it is historical IS in fact historical.

There is no apriori assumption that the everything in the Bible is historical at all. That comes AFTER assent. This is partly a mistake you make and to your benefit, many Christians as well.

Spiritual truths can be relayed using examples of historical incidents, ESPECIALLY when you wish to portray Jesus as being the Messiah or Son of God to the unbelieving Jews and the skeptical Gentiles…

As I said countless times before, this is not about justifying Jesus. This is about a valid methodology for judging a religion and accepting or rejecting it. Nothing I have said here assumes that Christianity is true or some other faith is true.

It merely assumes principles of natural reasoning that anyone (even an atheist) can relate to.

So if you want to reject Christianity on the basis that you find the historical evidence for the death and resurrection of Jesus to be lacking is FINE!!! If you have done your research and that is how you feel, all the power to you! But there are those like myself who have done the research and concluded otherwise. So we are equally reasonable in accepting Christianity.

What both sides would be unreasonable to do is accept a man as having knowledge of anything Transcendent just because the teachings sound “credible”, shows “earthly fruits of happiness and sense of peace” etc.

In short, no one is justified in assenting to a religion based on the CONTENT of the teaching. To assent based on CONTENT would mean that you already knew it inside of you to identify true CONTENT. But considering that such a principle is not even self-evident and sounds like a religious truth to begin with, this highlights an unreasonable assent on the part of any believer who has done such a things (albeit, this is what most of the world seems to have done prior to Christianity and even in this day).