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billcu1
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And you too.
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Khalid
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Thomas believes God to exist “analogously” to humans, which is a far sight from the teaching of some other Latin theologians that we can actually know or understand God (luckily, none of them are the “four big ones”, but enough minor ones to have a combined influence). Thomas is apophatic compared to other Latin doctors, but kataphatic compared to Eastern doctors.
That is, the teaching of Thomas is that he exists in some way, but not a way that we can understand. The Eastern Christians to view God as “beyond existence”, influenced by the Neoplatonic concept of the huperousion “One” (whereas Latin theology was more influenced by Aristotle than Plato after the schism). To say that God both exists and does not exist, or that he does both simultaneously, are correct insofar as one speaks of the essence of God (true “theology” the relation of God to God, not what the Orthodox call “economy”, the relation of God to not-God). One can also say that God neither exists or does not exist.
We can only univocally state the economy of God: “God is creator”, “God is incarnate in Christ”, etc., but we must equivocally speak of the theology of God: “The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father”; “The Son is begotten of the Father”; “The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son”: “procession”, “begetting”, “generation”, “Spirit”, “God”, “Son”, and “Father” are all used by way of analogy alone (and at best), as the “procession”, etc. spoken of are not those of humans. When we take equivocal and analogic thinking too far, we come up with ideas such as the fact that we can see the uncreated essence of God, which is logically certain from one side (the analogy of being/kataphaticism) and is logically absurd from the other (the created understanding the created fully, even though he can only understand Him equivocally and by analogy). Creatures can not even understand other creatures fully! What man can plumb the depths of a flower - or even the colour of the flower? - let alone God!
As mentioned above, which Thomas understood, although I believe at times in a way hindered by his Aristotelianism, when we speak of being itself, it is clear that we can not be speaking of a being: we are searching out the necessity behind all contingency.
I realize now that in order to make this post make sense, it would have to be ten times as long, and I’d have to be a far, far better writer than I am. I attempt to speak of “theology” proper, the relation of God to God, and God to metaphysics (being, etc.), which makes even the most difficult parts of “theology” (commonly called by the Easterns “oikonomia”) as commonly understood, such as regeneration, seem like an easily-understandable walk in the park.
I apologize if I have been unclear (I apologize, then, because I most certainly have: my mind is not sharp enough to penetrate such mysteries), and doubly seek forgiveness from man and God if I have written incorrectly about Him.
Christianity, through the incarnation of God, where the beyond-being enters the created realm, is the only religion that can hold these ideas in tension: a completely transcendent and completely immanent God. Know other religion can do this: Allah is completely transcendent, and Muslims call him immanent, but he is not; the god of Spinoza is completely immanent, and scientists call it transcendent, but it is not. Only God in Trinity can be completely transcendent and completely immanent.
We can not understand the transcendence of God even by analogy, being qualitatively different: but we can understand the immanence of God by analogy, being only quantitatively different.
Note, in the post above I use “equivocal”, “univocal”, etc. in the Scholastic, not the modern philosophic, sense. To translate it in to the key of modern philosophy, read “equivocal” as “ambiguous” and “univocal” as “absolute understanding through analogy”, e.g. that words describing actions of God mean the same thing when describing actions of men, even if the actions are completely different kind. (Scotus used it more generally, believing that we could speak of the being of God, and was far more kataphatic.)
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billcu1
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Thanks much Khalid. You are very knowledgeable and your insight is certainly welcome here.
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billcu1
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So you don’t agree with Spinoza I take it. What do you think about Rene Descartes?
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Khalid
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+1
Additionally, Spinoza and Descartes were two of the worst influences ever to have lived. Spinoza is only Descartes’ skeptical dualism with the “dual” part (i.e. mind, God) folded in to matter, as Spinoza says: “Everything that exists is an extension of matter” (Descartes invented the idea of “extensible matter” as opposed to the “prime matter”, i.e. God, the unmoved mover, etc. of Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophy), which, within the Cartesian framework (which Spinoza believed himself to be purifying and taking to its logical conclusion - I happen to agree, in that “spirit” in Descartes is just something tacked on to attempt to avoid the censor), discarding the spirit, reads that “Everything that exists is a manifestation of some extension of matter, including God, which is everything, and nothing else.”
Descartes above all else is where the West went wrong (even above nominalism). Spinoza is just a symptom of Cartesianism. I figured this out the other day, with examples, when reading a physics text. In the classical and mediaeval times, “reality” was considered real, and God the most real: abstractions were just that: abstractions. They could help us understand reality, but they could not define it. Reality is, and always will be, more real than the mathematical description of it (in fact, we know not why mathematics aligns with reality even as well as it does). But in this physics text, the definition of a “wave” - the mathematical concepts of which, such as wavelength, were discovered by observing actual waves, such as those of water and sound - is no longer anything to do with reality. The reality is defined by the math, where the actual real phenomena are relegated to being called “wave-like phenomena”, that is, a real action that approximates the mathematical approximation of that real action.
At first, what was real, was real in the mind of man. Phenomena are more real than abstractions of them (and all descriptions are necessarily abstractions). Descartes was the beginning of the end of that, the fulcrum and turning-point, the cardinal of modernity, if I may make a pun. Now, what is considered real in the mind of man is the mathematical formula, with actual, real reality considered in a subsidiary role: instead of there being a real phenomenon which can be approximately described using mathematics, now we have mathematics which can be approximated by real, “imperfect”, phenomena. The approximation and generalization has become the truth of things, with the truth of things considered no more than the approximation of the supreme mathematical truth.
Now, in time, this gave rise to all forms of scientism, infidelity, etc.: but it began here, with Descartes’ mathematization of nature, wherein he believed, and has made modern man to believe, that the mathematical description of a phenomenon is more real than the actual phenomenon itself. (Read about Descartes’ theory of vortices for a stunning confirmation of this.)
Thus, in Cartesianism, and in modern philosophy with signs following (i.e. heresy), the ordo essendi (what actually is:, lit. “order of being”) is collapsed in to and considered to be identical to the ordo cognoscendi (the way in which we understand what actually is through approximation and generalization, lit. “order of understanding”), and, over time, was even reversed, so that understanding was more real than the reality that was ostensibly trying to be understood. Of course, then, since we can not fully comprehend x, if x is not amenable to description in a system of equations, it must be false. And many things can not be comprehended mathematically: thus they can be ignored.
This moment in intellectual history is the very spawning ground of materialism, naturalism, methodological or philosophical, and scientism, all of which state, “What humanity can describe and understand is more real than what it can not”, disregarding every other consideration.
I strongly recommend you read the chapters on Spinoza and Descartes in Hahn and Wiker, Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300-1700, Herder & Herder 2013. It deals with the political, ethical, and theological philosophy of both of them, not just their interpretation of Scripture (in that sense, the title is misleading).
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Khalid
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As has been said, relating directly and prophetically to Descartes’ philosophy and the modernity and “science” (redefined from “knowledge” to mean “mathematical naturalistic knowledge”): “There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamed of in the philosophy of men”. Modern philosophy and science - all of which has its beginning and root in Descartes - is the intellectual equivalent of the three monkeys “hear no, see no, speak no evil”. It is not real if we can not understand it, saith the SCIENTIST: the description is more real than the phenomenon that is described, and, if it so happens that some phenomenon is not mathematically precise, well, we’ll call it “a natural approximation to the mathematical ‘laws’.”
Beyond the fact that, in the text I was reading, the mathematical concept of “wave” was considered to be more real than actual waves existing in nature (the actual waves being relegated to being called “wave-like phenomenon”), other concrete examples can be given: “440 hertz” is considered more real than the sound of the note “A below middle C”, just as “440 terahertz” is now considered more real than “the colour red”.
The actual, concrete phenomena were completely subjugated to mathematical generalizations which attempted to explain a range of phenomena with incomplete success. 440 terahertz may often appear to be red: but where, at what exact cycle per second (hertz) does red end, and orange begin? Prove this valid for all observers using a system of equations, and one has proved Descartes’ philosophy, that our thought is more real than reality itself (this is where his famous line “Thinking proves my being”, or, more commonly, “I think, therefore, I am” [Lat. *cogito ergo sum] comes from). This is where Descartes’ philosophy and the modern mathematical-mechanical project is shown bankrupt.
This line - possibly the most famous of all philosophical statements - sums up all of Descartes’ project: Cogito ergo sum is just another way of saying that the ordo essendi and ordo cognoscendi are identical, if thinking (describing) is being (experiencing phenomena).
Beyond the fact that, in the text I was reading, the mathematical concept of “wave” was considered to be more real than actual waves existing in nature (the actual waves being relegated to being called “wave-like phenomenon”), other concrete examples can be given: “440 hertz” is considered more real than the sound of the note “A below middle C”, just as “440 terahertz” is now considered more real than “the colour red”.
The actual, concrete phenomena were completely subjugated to mathematical generalizations which attempted to explain a range of phenomena with incomplete success. 440 terahertz may often appear to be red: but where, at what exact cycle per second (hertz) does red end, and orange begin? Prove this valid for all observers using a system of equations, and one has proved Descartes’ philosophy, that our thought is more real than reality itself (this is where his famous line “Thinking proves my being”, or, more commonly, “I think, therefore, I am” [Lat. *cogito ergo sum] comes from). This is where Descartes’ philosophy and the modern mathematical-mechanical project is shown bankrupt.
This line - possibly the most famous of all philosophical statements - sums up all of Descartes’ project: Cogito ergo sum is just another way of saying that the ordo essendi and ordo cognoscendi are identical, if thinking (describing) is being (experiencing phenomena).
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Bahman
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The idea of permanent hell to me is as ignorant as permanent heaven especially when it is described as punishment and reward toward our actions. We are living in state of nature and our action is largely due to our ignorance, if there is not God will, whether the action is good or bad.
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tonyrey
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Both the Greek concept of Nemesis and the Indian doctrine of Karma are based on the fact that our vices incur their own punishment and our virtues bring their own reward. Selfishness isolates us and love unites us. History tells us that moral corruption destroys individuals, nations and even empires.
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Bahman
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Why our mistake which is the result of our ignorance to absolute truth should lead to a punishment or reward? I mean how human who is not capable of understanding of the absolute truth nor could stand in position of God could possibly judge that a bad event is the result of a bad action performed in the past, the phenomena so called Karma. To my understanding all selves/individuals are equal in eyes of God and the differences from our perspective arises from the fact that we neither have the knowledge of God about individuals’ lives nor we are in position of God to know what is ultimate God’s plan for each individual life.
I agree.
History is not repeatable but lesson can be learn from it. I am wondering why people constantly doing the same mistake?
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Qoeleth
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I agree it seems reasonable that Hell is some kind of purgation. But, then again, we cannot honestly be sure. Scripture certainly clearly describes Hell as eternal fire. Maybe though, the fire is eternal, but the inhabitants don’t stay there permanently?
‘Fear of hell’ is pretty unfashionable, but maybe it is just as it is described by Jesus in the Gospel. If that is the case, even even if it just may be the case, it may be well to be a little afraid, as Paul says, to work out our salvation in fear and trembling. But then, 1 John says love drives out fear. (Please, no one say that the word for ‘fear’ actually should be understood as ‘awe’…)
It’s seems as if no-one can speak with authority- except God Himself. And He seems to think it best that we are not entirely sure…
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Qoeleth
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Why ignorant? What basis do you have for rejecting such a belief? Perhaps there is a God who rewards or punishes us after this life? Why not?
It seems equally impossible either to reject or to assert categorically such a belief. Surely neither hypothesis can be proven…Pascal’s wage must come into play…
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Khalid
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“Fear” should sometimes be understood as having “awe” as a subsidiary meaning in the OT, but much less in the NT. “The fear of God” is a fear tinged with awe, a grovelling fear, if I may say so without offense.
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Bahman
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Why permanent hell should be considered as punishment of our actions, which has finite contribution to life of others, especially if they are the result of our ignorance to/comprehension of absolute truth (God).
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Qoeleth
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Yes, it does seem a little unfair, to you and me and many people. But then, how do we know that our standard of fairness is correct, or that God doesn’t have a different standard, or that, since God is the source of moral authority and a unique type of Being, the category of ‘fairness’ doesn’t apply to Him at all. Who knows?
I don’t think we can dismiss the belief as ignorant. I mean, I am pretty sure people like Bonaventure, Scotus and Ockham would put me to shame in the intelligence stakes, and they believed in a permanent Hell. Then again, people like Buddha and Origen didn’t. So, who knows?
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Bahman
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A little, are you kidding? Being in state of Hell until eternity for anything you have done in a short period of life is little unfair especially when a persons failure is the result of ignorance of human toward what is good or bad to be done in a situation. We have never given a complete book describing our history in future! We have to face the time and learn the consequence of our actions.
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SextusEmpiricus
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I thought you were going to refute the claim that it is a “little unfair” but then you seemed to agree that it is a “little unfair.”
Additionally, one’s conception of fairness is subjective, no? Perhaps what seems fair to you seems quite unfair to someone else.
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Charlemagne_II
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Who can say for a certainty exactly what hell is? Based on the remarks of Jesus, I think it could be an eternal thirst for the Holy One we have eternally rejected by choosing “My will” rather than “Thy will” be done.
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Bahman
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Let me correct my sentence by a “!”
A little, are you kidding? Being in state of Hell until eternity for anything you have done in a short period of life is little unfair “!” especially when a person failure is the result of ignorance of human toward what is good or bad to be done in a situation. We have never given a complete book describing our history in future! We have to face the time and learn the consequence of our actions.
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davidv
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It appears your are arguing against a strawman. Sin is a deliberate act made with knowledge, not ignorance.
CCC said:
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Michael19682
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The above comment is really the Spirit of forgiveness and Love.
Look again at Mt 3:12
His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
It is the fire itself that is unquenchable. It serves a purpose. If love is in the heart of a person, why would God destroy that love, or punish it in any way. Just watch the fire, and the ashes and sparks that rise therefrom. Clear is it that a certain part of the person is heaven bound, even that which resides in the chaff which is itself of prior threshing.
Mt 24:36
“But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone."
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