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JRKH
Guest
What is being described here is, of course, the beginning of the spiritual journey as described by the great mystic Doctor’s of the Church…
We move from fear (the beginning of wisdom) to Love.
Peace
James
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We move from fear (the beginning of wisdom) to Love.
Peace
James
J
jochoa
Guest
Excellent questions, my friend! I look forward to further discussion.
The essential nature of God is: Always being and spreading the means to freely be perfectly patient, kind, and motivated with all the body, spirit, thoughts, and will equally towards others and the self for the unbreakable peace and happiness of every relationship, including within the self.
I know this for several reasons:
- Since this is His Greatest Commandments for us, He must be perfect at it.
- I am getting to know God by:
a. Wanting everyone to be able to experience happiness (contentment to intense joy) without ever losing any peace (freedom from disturbance).
b. Setting out to master being unconditionally patient and kind so that my relationships and self may experience happiness without losing any peace. Patience and kindness in the face of impatience and meanness is the major growth factor. Kindness, without disturbing anyone’s peace, in the face of boredom is secondary. And seeking to find the greatest source of motivation is tertiary.
c. Finding the solution to the following problem:
Given all the following:
-I, as a thinking, feeling, acting, and living being, exist in solitude (Hint: It is best to think of existing as a single-celled being, similar to how we first come to be).
-There is nothing else in existence.
-The only method to create something, living or non-living, is to first think of it in full detail.
-I want to experience limitless happiness without ever losing peace.
How do I make that happen? I had to first think about what are the requirements and try to figure out how to make those happen individually. - It is the foundation of all wisdom.
- It is Fundamental Philosophy which connects philosophy and theology.
- It reveals the Laws of Love.
- It is in alignment with Jesus Christ and what His Catholic Church has known and practiced for many years.
- It is the pinnacle of living.
Thoughts?
F
FurtherSuntime
Guest
In explaining this essence of God idea…
a) you can use all kinds of tingly words
b) all kinds of soothing suggestions
c) all kinds of quotes and tricky double talk
etc etc etc…
but if it cannot be matched to pain and suffering, holocaust, bundy etc etc…and it is matched to an interconnecting God…
the effort has totally and completely wasted its time, other then chicken soup if the listener is willing.
I will give an example which is totally hypothetical…
A person is mis-identified for someone else and is a very good person with little experience in bad situations. Tortured, raped, abused for 6 months.
She gets home and the husband tries all these ideas you guys are talking about including therapy and so forth
Come Sunday the husband says…ok lets go to church
Give me a break…( politely speaking
a) you can use all kinds of tingly words
b) all kinds of soothing suggestions
c) all kinds of quotes and tricky double talk
etc etc etc…
but if it cannot be matched to pain and suffering, holocaust, bundy etc etc…and it is matched to an interconnecting God…
the effort has totally and completely wasted its time, other then chicken soup if the listener is willing.
I will give an example which is totally hypothetical…
A person is mis-identified for someone else and is a very good person with little experience in bad situations. Tortured, raped, abused for 6 months.
She gets home and the husband tries all these ideas you guys are talking about including therapy and so forth
Come Sunday the husband says…ok lets go to church
Give me a break…( politely speaking
Q
Qoeleth
Guest
The essential nature of God is revealed in Christ- He is the agony of love, the wounded heart. Hence “God is near the broken hearted,” and in every tear shed for love, even for love of self, is God.With thanks to LilyM and Danserr, who’s comments in conversation have prompted this question.
What is the fundamental, basic, essential nature of God?
And how do you know?
Sarah x
God is love. Love is to suffer for love. This is God. This is life. This is truth.
If you wish to see the glory of God revealed, behold the Cross. If you wish to know five essential properties of God- meditate on the five wounds of Jesus.
God is the cry of pain of all life in this universe, the infinite sigh at the passing of all that is, at the infinite futility of all existence. Jesus, the mircocosm of God, was crucified for love. God similarly dies on the cross of this universe.
All this is metaphoric. For everything we ever say about God is more untrue than it is true.
H
Hypnotoad
Guest
Not necessarily. People can know different things about a single person and still validly claim to know the same person.
You know your mother as a daughter would know your mother, while others know your mother as only a coworker would know your mother. Both can validly claim to know your mother.
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FurtherSuntime
Guest
So if everyone was somber reflecting on brutality God is happy? First I read in this thread we can’t know what God is and now theres a big description telling what God wants…and I guess with my question there will be more to add to what we really don’t know
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FurtherSuntime
Guest
never mind…Ive had enough of this, its not the day for it
F
FurtherSuntime
Guest
A suggestion of the essence of God based in fully imposed guilt, is not a workable answer for the everydayness in regular people. Guilt then becomes a tool for acceptance Thats what people do sometimes…
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Gaber
Guest
You are welcome.
Well, there is book knowing, and there is direct knowiing. If it is book knowing, it will be all over the map.
Yes, you are very correct in assuming that. But knowing as and knowing about are radically different.
Framed that way, you will not get a useful answer. Beleif and knowing the essential nature of God are mutually exclusive.
A
atheistgirl
Guest
I’m not asking for different traits, or characteristics of God. I’m asking for His essential nature.
Are you suggesting God has different essential natures?
Sarah x
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tonyrey
Guest
The essential nature of God is, in simplest terms, existence itself. Moreover, He is pure intellect, not containing any matter, which is degradable. I believe all the principles of nature, from the laws of physics to evolutionary sciences suggest the presence of a transcendent will. Pure blind evolution doesn’t edify my curiosity. Take sensory apparatus: consider the amount of interconnected systems that make up the faculty of sight, not just the eye, which is often the focus of such debate. How could a completely accidental and unconscious process go about arranging the cells of its subjects into the incredible multitude of tissues and chemicals necessary to absorb light, transmit it to a neural network and then translate those frequencies into an array of depths and colors? What are the chances that random mutation would ever successfully build such an intricate system? It seems to me the idea of sight preceded the acquisition; that it’s much more likely that an intelligence beyond imagination set the universe in motion with such an incomprehensibly magnificent set of laws and principles that the emergence of life in all its variety and complexity was inevitable. How’s that?
Excellent! With Love as the creative and most fulfilling aspect of divine wisdom and perfection revealed to us in the beauty of human love, religion, nature, art, music, poetry, science and mathematics but most directly by Jesus of Nazareth.
J
Job42
Guest
Just popping in for an incidental comment: I highly respect your thirst for knowledge. I wish I had that thirst.Oh my Gosh!
That’s me out of commission and my reading sorted for the next week
Thank you.
Sarah x
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JDaniel
Guest
Sarah:With thanks to LilyM and Danserr, who’s comments in conversation have prompted this question.
What is the fundamental, basic, essential nature of God?
And how do you know?
Sarah x
God is the One Subsistent Being.
How do I know? Because, while we have, i.e., possess, existence, which is one half, if you will, of the composite essence-existence, God is existence, that is, essence and existence are in Him as one, but not as composite. From the point of view of sheer intelligibility, we can positively conceive the universe, even though it is an uncommonly huge composite. It has essence and it has existence. Each can be thought about separately and neither one is dependent upon the other. But, as parts, they require something more, something that can confer each of them onto an object, and do it not one after the other, but rather, simultaneously. That which confers the essence-existence composite onto the universe, e.g., must be more than, i.e., greater than, what receives it. We call that “God.”
God bless,
jd
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Qoeleth
Guest
To separate existence and essence is meaningless. Nothing can have existence without essence, and nothing can have essence without existence.
Consider a rock- It is a rock. Its existence is that IS. Its essence is that it is A ROCK. It cannot just “be” without being something (having essence), and it cannot be “a rock” without “being”. It is not a composite of the two. If it were, you could separate the two.
It is-a-rock. The existence and essence are not meaningful separable, and are only distinct units grammatically. The existence and the essence together form a single predicate.
Unless you mean “God’s essence is existence” as some kind of Zen-like, counter-rational way?
J
JDaniel
Guest
Qoeleth:
Please read what I said. Nowhere did I suggest that we could “ontologically separate” them. What I said is that each could be considered separately. I can easily consider your essence, as that of a “man,” I suppose, of a certain stature and means. Of course that presupposes that you exist. But, that factical doesn’t enter into the consideration. OTOH, I can consider you as existing, not "existence, but only existing. You surprise me, that with your intelligence, you failed to understand this.
You pick an inanimate object for discussion, that humankind has seriously failed to delve into in any meaningful way, such as we do with mobile beings. “Rocks” seem as though separate, broken-off pieces of one much greater object that is mostly mystery, but is not especially important to the vast majority of us.
But consider a man, or an animal. One can easily separate essence and existence in them. In fact, one can easily consider “man” in a universal way, which leaves out existence altogether. I can consider the essence of Godzilla without caring whether it exists of not - especially if I’m not near to him!
If we could think of all things as essentially existing, then what speciates them? All we would need to know is the species, “existing things.” It is impossible to think of the nature of man as “existence.” “Man” is more specifically a bunch of other stuff, such as “rational animal,” etc. But, it is not impossible to think of God as “existence.” That’s not Zen.
God bless,
jd
Q
Qoeleth
Guest
I understand Aquinas argument that God’s essence and existence are the same. However, my contention is that essence and existence are the always the same for existing things. An individual human being has a certain essence- (s)he is whoever (s)he is. The fact that he is at all (existence), is not something simply added on to what/who he is. As I mentioned, something can’t BE without being something, and it can’t be SOMETHING without be-ing. If we say God IS IS-NESS, the question still remains, “What or who is God (what is God’s essence)?”
What is “existence” as opposed to “existing”? “Existence” is merely the “state of existing”- it is only a name for a mental concept. ‘Existence’ does not exist apart from existing things, and even then it exists only as a mental class.
I understand the idea of God as “the form of existence”. But I don’t think it means anything substantial, in a post-Platonic age.
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Gaber
Guest
Whatever we say about “God,” a word that has been beaten into near uselessness, cannot contain essence.It, at best, can be a pointer. Now it can be a pointer to two things, one useful if taken advantage of in a particular way, antoher only leading to the kind of confusion found here. The kind of confusion found here is, as far as I can see, due to the idea that “God” can be objectified and argued about, that is to say, “defined.”
Definition points to a referent. I can “define” Belize, either by having been there and stating my experience, which gives me authority in this matter to the extent thI know it from my visit, or I can “define” by repeating hearsay not in my experience, say about China, where I haven’t been. The definitions about “God” touted on here are very easily and largely in the second category and have to do with an intellectual or emotional excercise as distinct from a direct expereince, There may be a few exceptions, but those are rare. as in order to do that one has to have had demonstrably gone beyond their dicursive mind. While this can be done, I suspect, by nearly anyone, the ingrained ideas about God we become habituated to ofetn become a barrier to this until they are exhausted.
So to argue about “Essence” and “existence” without having expereinced you own is to relegate the conjversatin to the arena of speculation by exchanging intellectualisms. Imho, that is not philosophy, it is entertainment.
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greylorn
Guest
AG,With thanks to LilyM and Danserr, who’s comments in conversation have prompted this question.
What is the fundamental, basic, essential nature of God?
And how do you know?
Sarah x
The answer depends upon the standards of inquiry. Religionists will simply define God according to the beliefs they’ve been taught, e.g. eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, etc.
Logical people will recognize that the existence of such an entity is logically impossible, or irrelevant, and declare that there is no God.
Someone aware of the laws of physics and principles of mathematical logic might find an interesting alternative, Supposing that there is a Creator of the universe, He, She, It, or They only need to have whatever abilities are required to create a universe. The project does not require infinite power, ability, or intelligence. It does not require the ability to create something from nothing. It does require:
- The ability to counter the Second Law of Thermodynamics, meaning, the ability to counter the normal flow of entropy.
- The ability to think, and to have self-derived consciousness.
- Extraordinary mathematical skills, of which, for example, the ability to solve multiple partial differential equations with multiple unknowns would be a beginning exercise.
- All known and hypothetical abilities which humans lump under the category of “psychic.”
- A suitable, selfish motive for creating a universe.
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jochoa
Guest
Very interesting post, my friend! What would you say is a suitable, selfish motive for creating a universe?
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greylorn
Guest
I’ve devised four of them so far, all described in the book I’m publishing this month which no one will want to read.
The most interesting, and my personal favorite, involves the assumption that God actually obeys the laws of physics and therefore did not create energy, which according to those laws cannot be created. It proposes that while God cannot change any of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics, He can at least interfere with the Second Law. Through a series of choices, God discovered that the activities of conscious entities such as himself and the “angels” were affecting the universe’s entropy level. Creation was designed to deal with that problem.
But this is a complex theory better explained in the book than in a post. Another theory that might be easier to explain in this venue involves the notion that God did not create the component of man that we call the “soul,” which has always existed as a non-conscious entity that did nothing. God created the human body as a machine which forces the soul (which is an extremely stupid and limited entity) into a tiny measure of consciousness in hopes that it will be interested enough in the result to take personal responsibility for sustaining it in the future.
Yes, this is but part of the whole motivation theory, but it is certain to raise the same objections as when presented on CAF a few years back, so there seems little point is detailing it further. Thus the silly book.
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