I agree completely with your logic. But, here is one scenerio…an immutable Being is at “rest”…then (out of Love and Courage and every other virtue) begins to Act.
Have you noticed that I am Buddhist (top right of my posts)? I reject all forms of “essence”. That results in two Gods: an unchanging inactive Essence-of-God and a changing active Hand-of-God. The two cannot be the same as they have different properties.
Study Aquinas.
You are not the first to notice my sig. The original source is Mark Siderits, “Thinking on Empty: Madhyamika Anti-Realism and Canons of Rationality” in S Biderman and B.A. Schaufstein, eds, Rationality In Question (1989). Dordrecht: Brill.
That the soul is in every part of the body is a direct quote from the Summa. The soul is the form of the body and if there were a part of the body to which the soul was not united, it would, logically, not really be part of the body.That’s not true. Think about people who get transplants and blood transfusions. Think about disabled people, if they can’t walk, is their soul crippled too?
I think you are missing my point. All change requires a referrent. “Something” has to change. There first has to be “something” for that “something” to change. If there is absolutely nothing, which is the case when we speak of ex nihilo creation, there is no “something” which can undergo a change. Change cannot occur until a “something” is brought into existence.
Technically speaking, God could have created a universe which had no beginning in time, but had an infinite past and an infinite future. He didn’t, but He could have. God does not have to create in stages. Think again of a line. God doesn’t have to draw a line by starting at one discrete point like we do, He can bring an entire line into existance all at once. Likewise, He could create a circle, which has no beginning or end, it is a perfect infinity. He could have brought an “eternal” world into being in the same fashion (by here eternal means an infinite amount of time as opposed to being outside of time.) Such an eternal world, however, would still require a creator. It does not seek the cause of its existence in time, but rather in a cause outside of time.
It is all part of the Mystery of the Incarnation and the hypostatic union. Christ had both a human and a divine nature, but these two natures are united in one divine person, the Son. Understanding the relation of person and nature is no easy task, and I do not claim to fully understand it myself, however, I do know that attributes such a immutability or mutability, apply to natures, and not persons. Thus, even though Christ changes in many ways, the Divine Nature does not.
Nothing obvious about it. It is just an assertion you keep making.
The concept of change is a logcial one, and not something strictly limited to humans. It is something true about reality, and not merely a perceptual and subjective experience of men. The point is, since the sacred Scriptures were first put to pen (and probably long before) until the present time, it has been held that God is unchanging. This is an absolute core tenet of monotheism as shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
I suspect change is not the only thing we see differently. I was taking as a premise that the Christian God actually exists, and explaining why such a God is immutable. If you do not accept that, it is your business, but you must understand that if you are trying to refer to a Christian God that changes, you are speaking of something that no one actually believes in.
The ability to learn is not a power in the true sense. It implies an imperfection, a deprivation of some kind. Again though, by denying God’s omnipotence, you prove that you are speaking of a different god entirely.
And here you deny free will, asserting a completely mechanistic universe. There is no common ground to talk about the original topic, i.e. the growth or non-growth of the soul.
The soul is Spirit. As such it has no deminsions. It is sort of like a thought, can you measure a thought? St. Thomas would describe the soul as containing the body. He also teaches that the entire soul is in every part of the body. So, no matter how big the body is, it is contained by the soul. The only way the soul " grows " is in knowledg, wisdom, holiness.The Church’s view is that the soul comes into existence around the moment of conception. From that moment we grow until adulthood. My question is, does the soul grow? I mean in a dimensional manner, with the body.
I was thinking in terms of … well …like “Plastic Man” the comic book hero. If I loose my leg, does the soul in that part of the leg snap back into the rest of the soul? Perhaps this where I should ask another question. If the soul is basically the same form as the body, does the soul have legs and arms? When some one dies does there soul maintain that shape of the body?
Are you saying there is no change? That’s weird. I’m watching things change as we speak. There are words on my screen that weren’t there a second ago. And yet, it is always now.
What is the time, where you are? I will bet you all the money in the world that it is NOW. You cannot escape it always being now. It will never be any other time apart from now. The present, for you, will never be five minutes ago, nor five minutes in the future. NOW is eternal, and NOW alone is real.
Prove that God does not act in eternity.
Ah, I see now. I think the difficulty is with thinking that the soul is “filling” the body.I was thinking in terms of … well …like “Plastic Man” the comic book hero. If I loose my leg, does the soul in that part of the leg snap back into the rest of the soul? Perhaps this where I should ask another question. If the soul is basically the same form as the body, does the soul have legs and arms? When some one dies does there soul maintain that shape of the body?
That doesn’t make any sense because that would mean when someone donates a kidney then they gave away a piece of their soul?? Or blood transfusion a person gives away some of their soul when they donate blood??
I disagree. If “something” changes, then it is a different thing. If there were no difference then there would be no change. Before and after cannot be the same if there is a change. That would requires at least two different somethings.
Are you trying to say that “nothing” is the same as “something”, because there is no change between “nothing” and “something”? If you are then I disagree.
Then creation is eternal; it exists for all of time. Something which is co-extensive with time is eternal, and need not have a cause.
It is also filled with errors from the point of view of Madhyamika Buddhist philosophy. Nagarjuna starts his analysis with a treatment of change which is very different to the standard Western treatment, deriving from the Greeks. All reification, including Thomist Substance, is rejected. What you see is what you get, there are no hidden depths to be found:
Change is defined as difference within time. At different points in time, God is acting differently. Therefore God is changing. If you look outside time, then the word in not “change” but something else, “unfaarn” perhaps. Since you say God resides well outside our experience, we cannot use words that are derived from our experience to describe Him.
It is only true of certain parts of reality. Change is defined in terms of time. Those parts of reality which do not have time also have no logical definition of change, though they may possibly have a logical definition of ‘unfaarn’.
I accept that, but such a core tenet is also logically impossible. The eternal and unchanging cannot act in time. Whatever acts in time cannot be either eternal or unchanging. If God acts differently at different points in time then either God is changing or there are two Gods, a changing God-in-action and an unchanging God-as-eternal.
The problem is not so much with the Christian God – a very similar God appears in the Tripitaka – it is with the concept of an eternal entity that acts within time, and does different things at different times. The eternal cannot change; whatever changes cannot be eternal.
Your insistence on an eternal unchanging God denies all possibility of growth. An unchanging God can only sustain an unchanging universe. I do posit a universe based on cause and effect because that is what we observe. Within that nexus of many causes we are free, within limits, to act. I cannot fly without mechanical assistance, even though I may wish to. My actions will have consequences, hence I should choose my actions carefully in order to produce the consequences that I wish.
No, I am pointing out that an absence of change is a consequence of what you said earlier:
Now is a subjective and relative measure of time, not an objective measure. The ‘now’ of George Washington differs from my ‘now’. It is incoherent to attempt to use a subjective measure, like ‘now’, as an objective measure.
My theory is Madhyamika while my practice is a mix of Theravada and Zen.
By definition any eternal entity cannot change. Action in time requires change; if there is no change then there is no action. Hence, only a changing entity can act in time. A changing entity cannot be eternal.
It is not irrelevant.
Is that even true?
Then those things are changing independently of God. Changes have causes; the changes happen if the causes are present. If God is always present and unchanging, the God-as-cause is always present. Hence God alone did not cause the change. Either God alone is insufficient, making God less than omnipotent, or God has changed from non-cause to cause.
Since I am not God, then it is irrelevant to me and to how I live my life. I do not live in eternity, I live in time.
I agree that they are not isolated, which is why effects like change can cross from time into eternity. Hence allowing God to change.
By acting inside the system, that entity is at least in part bound by the rules of that system. If I move a pebble at the bottom of a pond then I am going to get my hand wet.
Yes. The outlines of the biography of the Buddha are well known.
You have been misinformed. There are contemporary accounts of the Buddha in Jain scriptures. Similarly there are accounts of the Jain Mahavira in Buddhist scriptures. You may be confused by the fact that the Buddhist scriptures were transmitted orally for the first 400 years or so. The extremely repetitive style of the Pali Tripitaka is a relic of this period, as is the large number of numerical lists. The Anguttara Nikaya is entirely composed of such lists. They were only committed to writing later.
Much of the detail of the life of the Buddha is now inseparable from the legend. His attainment of nirvana is confirmed by the use of his techniques today to allow people to do the same.
