Can God truly understand the human condition?

[grannymh]

Whether we choose to say that sinning makes us more or less human, nevertheless, the point remains that there is a fundamental part of our condition that would seem to be experientially inaccessible to God.

This is a logical fallacy known as affirming the consequent. A popular example of the fallacy goes like this:

1. All cats are mammals.
2. You are a mammal.
3. Therefore, you are a cat.

Just as “being a mammal” is a necessary condition for being a cat, but being a cat is not a necessary condition for being a mammal, so love is necessary to have empathy, but empathy is not necessary to have love. In other words, one can love without necessarily being able to empathize, just as the previous poster can love his drug-addicted friend without being able to empathize with (or subjectively relate to) his situation, but one cannot empathize without love.

To give another example, this one specific to God, we could say:

1. All human beings have intellects
2. All human beings have sinned
3. God is an intellect
4. Therefore, God is a human being
5. Therefore, God has sinned

This argument assumes that there is some necessary link between having an intellect and being human.

To sum it up, one commits the error of “affirming the consequent” when his chain of reasoning assumes “P” (in this case, empathizing) is the only sufficient condition for “Q” (in this case, love), which is clearly not the case.

So the conclusion that because empathy is loving and God is love that God must be empathetic to our situation simply does not follow.

In fairness to logic, I now wonder what would be the axioms which lead to the conclusion that God must be empathetic to our situation.

 

[grannymh]

Whether we choose to say that sinning makes us more or less human, nevertheless, the point remains that there is a fundamental part of our condition that would seem to be experientially inaccessible to God.

This is a logical fallacy known as affirming the consequent. A popular example of the fallacy goes like this:

1. All cats are mammals.
2. You are a mammal.
3. Therefore, you are a cat.

Just as “being a mammal” is a necessary condition for being a cat, but being a cat is not a necessary condition for being a mammal, so love is necessary to have empathy, but empathy is not necessary to have love. In other words, one can love without necessarily being able to empathize, just as the previous poster can love his drug-addicted friend without being able to empathize with (or subjectively relate to) his situation, but one cannot empathize without love.

To give another example, this one specific to God, we could say:

1. All human beings have intellects
2. All human beings have sinned
3. God is an intellect
4. Therefore, God is a human being
5. Therefore, God has sinned

This argument assumes that there is some necessary link between having an intellect and being human.

To sum it up, one commits the error of “affirming the consequent” when his chain of reasoning assumes “P” (in this case, empathizing) is the only sufficient condition for “Q” (in this case, love), which is clearly not the case.

So the conclusion that because empathy is loving and God is love that God must be empathetic to our situation simply does not follow.

My apology.

I made a wrong turn in post 60. I got ahead of myself. It is better that I first address the actual issues in post 56, if one is going to use logic which follows the Deductive Method of reasoning. Depending on that outcome, then we can use logic, if necessary, to demonstrate that God is empathetic to the human situation. For example, an appropriate first true axiom could be John 3:16-17. I have been thinking that experiential knowledge would also include knowledge of results when the process is not present.

If one intends to use logic, then using the Deductive Method of reasoning starts with an appropriate first true axiom.

For example, if a person wishes to reach a conclusion concerning two separate distinctive natures such as divine and human, then an appropriate first true axiom would be that God, as the one almighty all-powerful true Divine Creator as taught by the Catholic Church exists. It would follow that all creatures, including humans, have to be created because the first axiom stipulates that there is one Creator. The act of creation also means that God interacts individually with humans according to Catholicism. The Catholic Church teaches that human nature is an unique unification of the material (decomposing anatomy) world and the spiritual (rational soul) world.

Since logic was brought up in post 56, may I gently suggest presenting the logical axioms which follow from above and lead to the post 56 point that there is a “fundamental part of our condition that would seem to be experientially inaccessible to God.”

I am looking forward to reading the required axioms which lead to the logical support for something in the human condition which could be experientially inaccessible to God. I am curious if you will use the State of Mortal Sin which is a truth according to the Catholic Church.

 

[Usagi]

There are quite a few fallacies being used on here. Assuming God is fair or perfect, anything that would tend to question either of these attributes is de facto discarded.

You, also, seem willing to accept certain things about God but not others. In particular, you are happy to point out that God is alien to sin and infinite in mind as long as that can be used to make Him look bad and unrelatable, but you do not acknowledge that His very inability to sin means that He must be morally perfect and fair, and His infinite mind means that there is nothing that is beyond His grasp. You accept the truths of Revelation as long as they back up your low opinion of God, but balk at equally revealed truths that paint Him as loving and caring.

Usagi

 

[Robertanthony]

You, also, seem willing to accept certain things about God but not others. In particular, you are happy to point out that God is alien to sin and infinite in mind as long as that can be used to make Him look bad and unrelatable, but you do not acknowledge that His very inability to sin means that He must be morally perfect and fair, and His infinite mind means that there is nothing that is beyond His grasp. You accept the truths of Revelation as long as they back up your low opinion of God, but balk at equally revealed truths that paint Him as loving and caring.

Usagi

I think that God can see when someone is choosing sin/lesser goods/creatures/creation over him, which is what sin is, i.e. choosing some-thing/one other than God, but may not totally understand the pull of sin, which, to a person with concupiscence, is like a magnet attracting metal. It’s very clear in many instances in the OT that God doesn’t understand his people, you can’t get angry with someone when you know doing x is all they can do and doing y is all they can’t do. “Therefore, be perfect like your Father is perfect”. Jesus was perfect, sinless, he was a sinless Adam with an equally present divine nature, asking us to be perfect doesn’t show a great deal of understanding of just what it is to be born in a fallen world without the gifts thta Adam enjoyed, which made loving and trusting God something easily accessible. If Adam sinned, how much more are we likely to sin, so the command to be perfect sounds like someone foreign to the human condition *after *the Fall.

God is infinite, therefore he knows everything, therefore he… Apart from meditating on and marvelling at his attributes all day, statements like these do no allow any type of conversation. I wann aknow why Jesus asked his disciples if they were without intelligence? I know God’s mind is infinite, but I wanna know why a sinless, perfect 100% human 100% God would say something like that. It tells me that Jesus was expecting something which a man without integrity and infused knowledge may not be able to comprehend/know.

This thread is in the philosophy section, philosophy is about searching, asking questions, not accepting things at face value, not accepting “Father knows best” as an answer. Searching for truth while trying to avoid fallacies. I’m no philosopher, nor an intellectual, but i try to contribute to this thread the best i can. There are things about God that make me doubt he knows us perffectly. Thank you.

 

[LilyM]

The bolded section is exactly my point. Having such a literally inexhaustible wealth of knowledge, it seems to me, renders the idea of God experiencing confusion or doubt logically absurd. God can obviously know the qualia of our experience and perhaps even understand what they feel like (whether physically or psychologically), but it doesn’t seem that He himself could experience those things in the same way we do. Those elements of our pain that are impossible for Him to experience (the doubt of His own existence; the guilt of sin) would seem to be very important elements which alter and intensify the suffering in ways that it is logically impossible for a perfect being to fully understand in any subjective sense.

The Incarnation must be the key, but the question is how could God diminish, so to speak, his divinity so as to experience agony and fear as He apparently did in the garden of Gethsemane? Is it an unfathomable mystery? Perhaps, but I think there has to be at least some way that we can wrap our minds around it to some degree. I wonder if there is such a passage lingering somewhere in the depths of Aquinas’ corpus…

How did it happen? I think of it as being much the same as me getting on my knees, crawling around on the floor and talking baby talk whilst playing with a baby. The fact that I have powers of speech and movement beyond what the baby has doesn’t prevent me wanting to, or being able to, get ‘down to its level’, so to speak.

And it is much better for the baby - I can’t imagine it would benefit as much from only seeing my face at a distance of a yard or more, and only hearing me discourse about the stock market or some such adult topic

 

[littlestsouls2]

Human condition pre-fall is essentially different from human condition afterwards. Ontologically different, maybe. But apples and oranges different. I don’t doubt God knew human condition as he had first designed it, with the 3 preternatural gifts (infused knowledge, immortality, and integrity). But lose these three things, and you become a wholly different beast. Also your argument seems to contain a fallacy, looks like a circular reasoning, or an appeal to authority. God is just, therefore knows everything, if he didn’t saying he was just would be absurd. Not terribly conducive to discussion. I’M not smart enough or well-schooled in philosophy to say just what it is, if anyone knows, I,d be happy to learn.

The Fall has radically affected man; that is true.

The knowledge of God, the Source of all being, is eternal like God Himself; it cannot be added to or subtracted from, relative to temporal events, such as the Fall of man.

The beginning of thy words is truth: all the judgments of thy justice are for ever. (Psalm 119:160).

For in him we live, and move, and are (Acts 17:28).

The reasoning is not circular. God does not know everything because He is just; His judgements are just or true as a result of His infinite knowledge. (I am not asserting that we can prove that God is just; but He is certainly all-knowing).

 

[prodigalson2011]

My apology.

I made a wrong turn in post 60. I got ahead of myself. It is better that I first address the actual issues in post 56, if one is going to use logic which follows the Deductive Method of reasoning. Depending on that outcome, then we can use logic, if necessary, to demonstrate that God is empathetic to the human situation. For example, an appropriate first true axiom could be John 3:16-17. I have been thinking that experiential knowledge would also include knowledge of results when the process is not present.

If one intends to use logic, then using the Deductive Method of reasoning starts with an appropriate first true axiom.

For example, if a person wishes to reach a conclusion concerning two separate distinctive natures such as divine and human, then an appropriate first true axiom would be that God, as the one almighty all-powerful true Divine Creator as taught by the Catholic Church exists. It would follow that all creatures, including humans, have to be created because the first axiom stipulates that there is one Creator. The act of creation also means that God interacts individually with humans according to Catholicism. The Catholic Church teaches that human nature is an unique unification of the material (decomposing anatomy) world and the spiritual (rational soul) world.

Since logic was brought up in post 56, may I gently suggest presenting the logical axioms which follow from above and lead to the post 56 point that there is a “fundamental part of our condition that would seem to be experientially inaccessible to God.”

I am looking forward to reading the required axioms which lead to the logical support for something in the human condition which could be experientially inaccessible to God. I am curious if you will use the State of Mortal Sin which is a truth according to the Catholic Church.

Without further explication, I’m not sure I follow you completely, but I will do my best. This may be a bit lengthy and will almost certainly require revision, but I’ll go ahead and take a stab at it just to get the ball rolling. So without further ado…

1. God exists.
2. God, per theism, not only exists, but is perfect existence.
3. Since God is perfect, this precludes any moral or intellectual failing on His part.
4. God created human beings with an imperfect approximation of Himself (the “imago Dei”)
5. Being, unlike God, imperfect, human beings are prone to such things as sin, intellectual error, doubt, guilt, etc.
6. The aforementioned states and actions are the consequential manifestation of some privation of perfection.
7. Ergo, none of the aforementioned states can be experienced apart from such a privation, of which they are no more than the temporal manifestation.
8. God, being perfect, can neither be added to nor taken from, and thus cannot experience any form of privation.
9. Ergo, God cannot experience such states as doubt, guilt, etc.
10. It follows that the human experiences of doubt, guilt, etc. are experientially inaccessible to God.
11. Per the Incarnation, this would only apply to those mental states which follow from the intellectual/spiritual/moral life of the human being, and not those which stem primarily from the physiological element. Thus, the experience of such mental states as anxiety, fear or anger, which are in and of themselves morally and intellectually neutral, would be accessible to God via His Incarnation.
12. To reiterate, it would seem that these states are inaccessible to God because the necessary condition for their being experienced is the privation of some spiritual, intellectual or moral perfection, none of which can befall the divine intellect. Here I would cite Aquinas who says that “sin” is not a thing in itself, but rather the privation of some good in some actual thing. Similarly, it would seem that those “states” which result from sin or intellectual shortcomings are not actually a part of human nature per se, but rather a privation of human nature. Thus, even if God takes on human nature, since He can suffer no privation, it would seem to follow that He cannot experience these spiritual conditions.

 

[paziego]

It’s not that God can’t understand the human condition, it’s that He understands it in a way that we never shall. He has the “full picture”, as did Jesus. Human beings don’t have this. So even though God may know everything a person is feeling and understand it perfectly, being human entails lacking this perfect understanding. It certainly seems Jesus didn’t lack any of the fathers knowledge - being fully God as well as fully human it would be impossible that the did.

The argument is that Jesus was not subject to the same limitations as us, and of the effects of those limitations, which are what define the human experience.

The title of the thread was about whether God could understand the human condition, but the first post specifies that the questions is about Jesus’ partaking in the human experience. One simple question: could Jesus have doubted the existence of God?

 

[prodigalson2011]

It’s not that God can’t understand the human condition, it’s that He understands it in a way that we never shall. He has the “full picture”, as did Jesus. Human beings don’t have this. So even though God may know everything a person is feeling and understand it perfectly, being human entails lacking this perfect understanding. It certainly seems Jesus didn’t lack any of the fathers knowledge - being fully God as well as fully human it would be impossible that the did.

Which is precisely my point. The question this raises is if His understanding things in His omniscient way somehow hinders his ability to understand what our experiences are like to us. For if we had his perfect understanding, surely our subjective experience of our trials and tribulations would be qualitatively different. What I’m asking is whether God’s “full picture” understanding of our troubles prevents Him from being able to fully empathize with what it’s like for us.

The argument is that Jesus was not subject to the same limitations as us, and of the effects of those limitations, which are what define the human experience.

The title of the thread was about whether God could understand the human condition, but the first post specifies that the questions is about Jesus’ partaking in the human experience. One simple question: could Jesus have doubted the existence of God?

I gave my answer to that question in an earlier post. Since you asked, I’d like to take this opportunity to reiterate with some added revisions:

It seems that asking whether God could understand what it actually feels like to doubt His existence, or to be overcome by temptation, is a question akin to asking whether He can make a rock too big for [Himself] to lift [that is to say, it is a logically absurd and thus meaningless question]. Since God is morally perfect and omniscient, it [would seem that it] is impossible for Him to doubt His own existence…

 

[prodigalson2011]

Would the fact that God reads minds have any relevance here? People are talking as though God can only understand our struggles intellectually, as an outsider – but remember that He knows all our thoughts and feelings as well. Even though He cannot be a sinner or an atheist or whatever, He knows exactly what the experience is like for us, and even how it’s different for each one of us.

Usagi

It has some relevance, but I don’t think it solves the problem because the contents of our minds are not equivalent to the subjective experiences from which they derive. They are a reflection of it, certainly, and they can surely allow God to understand our motivations, but the actual experience of pain is separate from the thoughts, and the tendency towards sin, doubt or rejection of God to which they may lead involve an element of weakness that is simply not present in God.

To make sure I’m not being misunderstood, the struggle I have with this question is not whether God can understand our decisions at all, but whether He can fully empathize with our individual circumstances; whether He really knows what it feels like to be us.

 

[prodigalson2011]

How did it happen? I think of it as being much the same as me getting on my knees, crawling around on the floor and talking baby talk whilst playing with a baby. The fact that I have powers of speech and movement beyond what the baby has doesn’t prevent me wanting to, or being able to, get ‘down to its level’, so to speak.

And it is much better for the baby - I can’t imagine it would benefit as much from only seeing my face at a distance of a yard or more, and only hearing me discourse about the stock market or some such adult topic

But this is simply imitating behavior; it doesn’t equate to a shared experience of “being a baby.” Since we can’t form memories as babies, and since, as adults, we have faculties that babies do not (i.e. a functional intellect, the ability to think in the abstract), we don’t really know what it’s like to be a baby. We can simply observe and replicate their behavior. But the subjective experience of being a baby (having no verbal language or abstract thinking skills) necessarily remains alien to us because we can’t just “turn off” our ability to think. My obstacle in this thread is that, just as we can’t turn off our ability to think, God cannot “turn off” his omniscience and omnipotence, and thus the experience of being weak and broken (spiritually, not physically) remains alien to Him.

To use another example, we can learn to communicate with animals in a way that they understand, but it doesn’t follow that we understand what it’s like to be that animal. And it seems that the same would be true of our relationship to God. He can communicate with us in ways that we understand and, unlike us, can even take on our form. But it just seems that, by the very fact of His being God, it would be logically absurd for Him to be able to experience the pain of true doubt, or the pangs of conscience that follow sin. So that would be a part of us that God can see, even know, but that He can not feel.

 

[wmw]

“1) All cats are mammals.
2) You are a mammal.
3) Therefore, you are a cat.”

This is a false aregument and there is a fundamental difference in this argument and mine.

1. God is love.
   This is fundamentally different in that it is reversably true, Love is God. There is no love that is not God. While for mammales there are many non-cat mammals.
2. I said, “if empathy is loving.” because I account for any empathy that is un-loving to say that only loving empathy is God and God is loving empathy for loving empathy is totally a subdivision of love.

Because the logic works in its entirety, forwards and backwords it is flawless and not subject to your presumed flaw.

If we start talking about unloving empathy then I hope we can agree that none wants it in ourselves or our God.

I start with high axiom that God is Love and some may not wish to surrender that and that Love is God, but it is not in any such flaw of logic that some are having difficulties; so, I applaud the direction of searching for more basic axioms.

 

[paziego]

Which is precisely my point. The question this raises is if His understanding things in His omniscient way somehow hinders his ability to understand what our experiences are like to us. For if we had his perfect understanding, surely our subjective experience of our trials and tribulations would be qualitatively different. What I’m asking is whether God’s “full picture” understanding of our troubles prevents Him from being able to fully empathize with what it’s like for us.

I gave my answer to that question in an earlier post. Since you asked, I’d like to take this opportunity to reiterate with some added revisions:

It seems that asking whether God could understand what it actually feels like to doubt His existence, or to be overcome by temptation, is a question akin to asking whether He can make a rock too big for [Himself] to lift [that is to say, it is a logically absurd and thus meaningless question]. Since God is morally perfect and omniscient, it [would seem that it] is impossible for Him to doubt His own existence…

Is what you are asking whether He can shed His own perspective in order to see and feel things exaclty as we do? I guess there is a difference between experiencing something from a perfect and an imperfect stance.

 

[wmw]

Christ’s passion is a death of compassion. He can only achieve the redemption of humanity by being in solidarity with us in our sufferings of all the consequences of sin for all in the entire world.

This is part of an explaination of Isaiah 53;4-6, 10-11 found at calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/

Christ carried in His body the sufferings that sin has brought into the world, and that Christ suffered in His soul over all the sins of the world, and their offense against God. He bore our iniquities not in the sense that God punished Him for what we did, but in the sense that He grieved over them all, in solidarity with us.* That is what it means that the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He suffered the consequences of sin (i.e. suffering, grief, death), by entering into solidarity with us, entering into our fallen world, and allowing Himself to suffer in it with us, for us, even by our hands.

This solidarity may not be in actually commiting the sins, but in grieving over them He is one with us in the pain they cause. No futher empathy or experience of sinning is necessary or good and loving.

 

[grannymh]

To make sure I’m not being misunderstood, the struggle I have with this question is not whether God can understand our decisions at all, but whether He can fully empathize with our individual circumstances; whether He really knows what it feels like to be us.

I am in the midst of responding to your post 66. However, there seems to be a slight change in the vocabulary in post 69 – “whether He really knows what if feels like to be us.” This time “experientially” is not indicated which leaves “knows” wide open to all the ways people can learn. This is not a big deal for me because as I keep looking at experiential learning, I am finding a possible different way one can learn experientially without direct contact with the original “action.”

 

[grannymh]

Christ’s passion is a death of compassion. He can only achieve the redemption of humanity by being in solidarity with us in our sufferings of all the consequences of sin for all in the entire world.

This is part of an explaination of Isaiah 53;4-6, 10-11 found at calledtocommunion.com/201…the-atonement/

Solidarity is a marvelous description. “Grieving” would fit with the thought I had that God knows what sin is by its results. Grieving would also fit with mercy and justice.
While human words cannot adequately describe a transcendent Pure Spirit’s actions, they can shed some light on the infinite love of God.

 

[prodigalson2011]

“1) All cats are mammals.
2) You are a mammal.
3) Therefore, you are a cat.”

This is a false aregument and there is a fundamental difference in this argument and mine.

1. God is love.
   This is fundamentally different in that it is reversably true, Love is God. There is no love that is not God. While for mammales there are many non-cat mammals.

This is not what the Catholic Church teaches. The Church teaches that God is love itself and the source of all love. What you are saying is an error akin to that of others who draw the erroneous conclusion that because God is, per Catholic teaching, existence itself, so everything that exists is part of God (which is the heresy of pantheism.) It’s a complicated doctrine to explain, but suffice it to say, the statements “God is Love” and “Love is God” are not equivocal and the latter is not true.

 

[prodigalson2011]

Is what you are asking whether He can shed His own perspective in order to see and feel things exaclty as we do? I guess there is a difference between experiencing something from a perfect and an imperfect stance.

That is exactly what I am asking.

 

[prodigalson2011]

I am in the midst of responding to your post 66. However, there seems to be a slight change in the vocabulary in post 69 – “whether He really knows what if feels like to be us.” This time “experientially” is not indicated which leaves “knows” wide open to all the ways people can learn. This is not a big deal for me because as I keep looking at experiential learning, I am finding a possible different way one can learn experientially without direct contact with the original “action.”

I don’t think the change is so significant. While I did not use the word “experientially,” I did mention empathy, which itself implies experience. I would also say that the phrase “to know what it feels like,” translates to having experienced something.

As paziego eloquently summed it up in his last post, it is a question of whether “He can shed His own perspective in order to see and feel things exactly as we do,” which I think is important because “there is a difference between experiencing something from a perfect and an imperfect stance.”

 

[grannymh]

Without further explication, I’m not sure I follow you completely, but I will do my best. This may be a bit lengthy and will almost certainly require revision, but I’ll go ahead and take a stab at it just to get the ball rolling. So without further ado…

1. God exists.
2. God, per theism, not only exists, but is perfect existence.
3. Since God is perfect, this precludes any moral or intellectual failing on His part.
4. God created human beings with an imperfect approximation of Himself (the “imago Dei”)
5. Being, unlike God, imperfect, human beings are prone to such things as sin, intellectual error, doubt, guilt, etc.
6. The aforementioned states and actions are the consequential manifestation of some privation of perfection.
7. Ergo, none of the aforementioned states can be experienced apart from such a privation, of which they are no more than the temporal manifestation.
8. God, being perfect, can neither be added to nor taken from, and thus cannot experience any form of privation.
9. Ergo, God cannot experience such states as doubt, guilt, etc.
10. It follows that the human experiences of doubt, guilt, etc. are experientially inaccessible to God.
11. Per the Incarnation, this would only apply to those mental states which follow from the intellectual/spiritual/moral life of the human being, and not those which stem primarily from the physiological element. Thus, the experience of such mental states as anxiety, fear or anger, which are in and of themselves morally and intellectually neutral, would be accessible to God via His Incarnation.
12. To reiterate, it would seem that these states are inaccessible to God because the necessary condition for their being experienced is the privation of some spiritual, intellectual or moral perfection, none of which can befall the divine intellect. Here I would cite Aquinas who says that “sin” is not a thing in itself, but rather the privation of some good in some actual thing. Similarly, it would seem that those “states” which result from sin or intellectual shortcomings are not actually a part of human nature per se, but rather a privation of human nature. Thus, even if God takes on human nature, since He can suffer no privation, it would seem to follow that He cannot experience these spiritual conditions.

Thank you.

The 12 points are very good – which means that this cranky granny can follow them and understand how you arrived at the conclusion. However, points 4 and 5 need to be validated or confirmed – which means that the conclusion in point 12 may not be accurate.

Because you did suggest the possibility of revision, personally, I would revise the first two or so axioms as a way of arriving at the validity of the conclusion. My position is that the initial true axioms, followed by truths based on them, will lead to an answer of either yes or no to the thread’s question “Can God truly understand the human condition?”

What makes the deductive method of reasoning somewhat difficult is that the nature of God is not the same as the nature of the human person. Saying that one is the Creator and one is the creature is a foundational axiom. However, when the concept of perfection is being used, automatically, the standard of perfection cannot be the same for both the Creator and the creature. When we compensate for the discrepancy between divine and human natures, by referring to an imperfect approximation of God Himself (the “imago Dei”), we need to give the specifics so that the merit of point 4 can be established.

Note: I used the word “automatically” above because otherwise we are dealing with the possibility of two Gods. One of the elements of Satan’s temptation is the assumption that there can be more than one God. A sidebar would be that the possibility of plural gods came from sources outside of the Hebrew tradition.

Going back to my opening sentence. “The 12 points are very good – which means that this cranky granny can follow them and understand how you arrived at the conclusion.” The next thing is to test these points by placing them in the context of Catholic teachings.

Since we are trying to find the truth regarding the relationship between two distinct natures, the beginning truths (axioms) should be established truths (from Catholicism) containing particular basic information about these two natures. Point 8 is essential basic information. It relates well to the topic. Would you consider point 8 as an example of the principle of non-contradiction?