You’re correct that if I wanted to understand the creator I would have to know what he is and what he isn’t.
What He is and what He isn’t is something needed in order for you to know what you are worshipping and what to refrain from worshipping. Again, you don’t believe that God is a statue. There has to be a reason for that.
If you believe God can be contained within human understanding then you most certainly believe in a limited god. Like you, I have a limited ability to understand. Have you ever tried to comprehend the infinite? Think just what eternity is? Have you succeeded? Somehow I must doubt it. Such thought would drive a man insane.
And as I pointed out already, they were not being quoted as tyrannical authorities to which one must submit, but as thinkers who agree with the basic principle that you cannot 1.say anything about God that strikes your fancy, 2.say things that are contradictory. And they consider this a basic rational principle. If you are going to abandon reason with respect to some topic, there really isn’t anything left to talk about. That idea, on which most everyone agrees, that God is beyond the comprehension of the finite intellect is not the same as saying that you can posit contradictions about God. In fact the claim that God exceeds comprehension is a rational claim based upon what we understand when we say the word God or the One or the Good: that which is Infinite and not subject to distinction or limit.
While it does not contain the rock quote, the relevant passage is found in section 7 of the Proslogion. Here Anselm says what I said earlier: namely, that you cannot say anything of God that would denote dependence, or that God is not Absolute, etc., etc. When we say that God cannot do certain things, what we are really doing is affirming God’s omnipotence. Anything that would contradict God’s power cannot be predicated of God. The idea that God cannot simply forgive sins by divine fiat (which would appear to be placing a limit on God’s power but does, in fact, NOT) is found in Cur Deus Homo (along with a host of other examples, since the whole book is driven by an analysis of what God must do in order to be true to God’s own being).
A very powerful human would be capable of change, existence in time, space, etc., etc. All of which we are denying concerning God, because God is not a thing (a finite, existent).
except a human person
That’s a nice way to avoid my point, though the last sentence sets up the problem all over again. Did the Logos become human in the sense that the Logos changed? Or is the Logos eternally the human Jesus (in which case something created makes the Logos what it is and God becomes dependent upon the finite in order to be God). Either of these are problematic statements. I would refer you back to the objections that you so blithely skipped over since you just repeated the objectionable statement.
As has been said many times over, this is done as an affirmation of omnipotence (I am also pretty sure I never said anything like ‘stay in heaven’ which makes it sound like God is bilocating when, I am guessing we both agree, God is not contained in any place).
I find this sentence fascinating. You have been complaining that, because I argue that the idea of the Infinite or the One or God cannot be contradicted when speaking of God, that I am placing limits on God. But here you are saying, in effect, “Hypatia contradicts God’s omnipotence, and I do not, therefore my understanding of God is better.” So in the end, you too know what you mean when you say “God” and you think it is wrong for me to contradict that.
And I while I have skipped over this so far in this thread, I mentioned it earlier. The idea that God, in the Incarnation, “enter
I believe you have stated in other threads to understanding the hypostatic union. If that is the case, then your responses to this thread (such as above) suggest a knowledge of what it is, but a refusal to allow it to transcend your presupposition from Islam. If you understood the hypostatic union and the incarnation in the most orthodox sense, you would understand the Logos did not change, but took on a human flesh, maintaining a full deity while taking on a full humanity (as the beginning of John states). You would also understand that the Logos, in a way, was eternally Jesus (as Jesus was the Word) but that the revelation did not come about until the Trinity. These are not problematic statements when one understands the definitions involved.
I don’t see any contradiction there in Nine_Two’s argument. He is saying that your saying, “God has limits to what He is capable of” limits God, and you respond with, “Well you have an idea of God, so you have a contradiction in your own argument!” To be honest, that’s a bit of a stretch.
As I said in the Trinity thread (a response which you never responded to), it is one thing for a spiritual person to think reasonably, and another for a spiritual person to base their faith in reason. Dante Alighieri had a good point in having Virgil stop at Purgatory before Dante ascended to Paradise - he was making the point that human reason (which Virgil represented) could only go so far. That is true for any spiritual person - at some point their belief transcends human reason and rational.
That is sarcasm and cycnicism that, quite frankly, I would expect from hamba or planten but not from you.
That is very concerning. When a Muslim is confronted with the Gospel, very few will accept. The peer pressure is too great. Yet, scripture teaches one must be willing to give up father, mother, brother, etc … to become disciple of Christ. Scripture also teaches Christ is THE way to the Father.
Regardless of who else used it (including “Shaykh Abu Adam” from Son of Adam’s post, so I’m assuming it must have some currency in Islamic apologetics as well), the fact that you would fall back on it to try to prove a point is what I’m talking about. You obviously think it is a valid argument. And the word is “earthliness”, not “earthiness”. Two very different meanings. I say that Islam is earthly because it seems to me to be very concerned with things of this world. I have always been baffled as to how it holds some sort of mystical attraction for some people. But I digress…
I can posit something as a layperson without making it out to be a foundational statement of my faith, so without specific reference to the substance of the sentence fragment you quoted above I would like to here deflate the notion that because I have chosen to speak about God in any capacity, I am contradicting myself (this seems to be the veiled suggestion of the above section of your post). I would not say and I did not say that Muslims or anyone else cannot discuss God without limiting Him. Obviously as religious people we have to find some way of communicating about God. However, the way in which it is done is very different among Christians and Muslims. Unlike the Islamic notion of a God that cannot become man, my statement above is not about His abilities or the restriction thereof. My point is to say that Islamic theology seems to require an inappropriate and false hamstringing of what is otherwise claimed to be an all-powerful, boundless God. God can do anything until it comes to debating the Incarnation, when all the sudden God does not beget because He has no consort, as though God reproduces sexually like a man (a pretty weird reason to deny the Incarnation, from my view…I thought the crux of the Islamic rejection of the incarnation was that God is so utterly not man-like that it is an affront to Him to suggest that He take on the form of a man, though apparently it is not a problem to suggest that He needs a partner in order to have son? What then of the virgin birth of 'Isa within Islam?).
Good news. What Protestant branch off of Catholicism is your church ?
Do Muslims ever kneel before a wife or mother … showing respect for the weaker sex ? Respect for another is not worship. The Church clearly teaches this to its fold.
What does ‘contained within human understanding’ mean?
You are taking the words way out of context. I’m not saying that we can understand everything about God, what I am saying is that we need to know things about Him to make sure we don’t fall into idol worship for example; isn’t this using reason? Who would disagree with this?
Instead of using the square-circle example, lets use another. If someone said that The Creator is Ever-Living or Immortal then says that same God can die would be absurd[and no it is not limiting God it is contradicting Him]. One must be true and the other must be false. Its a contradiction in terms. If you still don’t agree with this then please explain how two contradictory statements can be true at the same time.
The Bible says that God ‘is a spirit’ so that means God was not a body before; so when He changed from spirit to body, He had a beginning because before He was not a body and spirit, but only a spirit;therefore God was contained by His own creation which makes no sense at all. God is perfect and not subject to change as was stated before.
So when Jesus(peace be upon him) was reported to have said ’ Hear O Israel, The Lord our God is One’ is this also 'limiting the idea of God to human understanding"? When God says ‘Do not take for worship other gods except Me’ don’t you think we need to know what God isn’t because of this command? If that wasn’t the case, there would be no point in instructing us not to worship anything except Him.
We are not limiting God, we are just saying what contradicts God i.e. What He isn’t.
You are quite right. I hope that everyone will understand that that comment was nothing more than a little outburst of hyperbole on my part and was, in no way, meant as a serious representation of what Christians believe nor was it advanced as a serious argument. I shouldn’t have allowed it distract from the point (which it is certainly bound to do in a setting like this).
You are quoting them as Christian authorities whose opinions must be taken into account. I am saying that I reject much of the tradition they are based off, and even said that insofar as I know the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, I think them outright wrong.
There are many Christian writters who write of paradox’s. As I said at the beginning my time is short so I don’t have time to track them down right now, but I’ll see what I can find. At any rate you ignored my point that paradoxes have been scientifically proven to exist in nature. Dismissing something off hand as a contradiction is neither rational, nor intellectually honest.
Why is that? Reason is not the end. Reason is not everything. However I would expect someone who holds this view would come up with more reasoned arguments.
The key word is we cannot SAY. The reason for this is whatever we attribute to God will necessarily be wrong, as God is beyond human concepts. We can say God is Good, but that doesn’t go far enough, we can say God is omnipotent, but we don’t understand what that means.
Change is a very human thing, as you state since God is neither a thing, nor subject to time - upon which change is dependent - God does not change, for everything has already happened.
And in which way do you mean “person”, Orthodox theology states he was very much a human person, with everything that goes along with that.
The Logos is always eternal, the flesh is not. Though they are bound together they are not the same, just as the soul is not the same as the body.
I’m not sure where I said you said he has to stay in heaven. But no we don’t agree, you’re still placing limitations on what he can and cannot do, we just agree that he is everwhere, a meaningless agreement as far as this topic goes.
Yes, when you say God cannot do anything you are placing limits on him.
Reason is not something which applies to one side and not the other. You have used reason to “prove” that God must be limited. This proves that either Christianity and Islam are both false, or that reason is not the end of all.
You give up God on the path to reason. I do not know how your faith in Mohammed continues. You use name calling against my arguments (insisting on calling a paradox a contradiction for the sake of demonization), and then in the same sentence declare I am guilty of non sequiturs? Show me where! Your argument that you do not hold God to be limited because certain Christian writers may have imposed limits on God is one large nonsequitur! And again after that, you decree that I must use reason alone in my dealings with the divine and then you declare he is not bound to our reason? I sincerely hope this is sarcasm and an insult aimed at me.
It means you want a nice neat little package that you can understand without having to worry about loose ends.
No, you said God was understandable. He can be understood to a limit. We don’t fall into idol worship because we obey what he says, not because we understand him.
God did not die. The incarnation died, and even then he came back to life after three days. This is about as absurred as saying that Mohammed ascended into heaven, or that God took him on a journey to Jerusalem in the middle of the night. As I have already argued, science has proven paradoxs exist, so don’t dismiss something as a contradiction just because you can’t understand it. The use of demeaning words against Christian doctrine does not prove Islam correct, and in fact goes back to the title of this thread - Islam is an offence to our Lord.
LOL!!!
God is incorporeal, however the incarnation during its 33 years on this earth had a human body. There was a point in time when it took up that body, and a point in time when it discarded that body, but that doesn’t change that God is eternal. Having a body did not change God, as you and Hypatia keep trying to force the idea the God was contained into the body. God wasn’t contained in the body, God continued to be God.
I’m beginning to wonder if you even know what the word “limit” means.
What contradicts God according to the book written by a pagan desert merchant.
Pagans don’t usually believe in an omnipotent God, usually they believe their gods are limited, that’s both a strawman and a non-sequitur.Whats your argument against someone who worships Idols and says that God is inside of his/her idol and that is why they worship it. If they use your reasoning (i.e., reasoning can’t be used to understand God), they would say, ‘Since God is not limited, why can’t He be inside of it?’
I cited them as philosophers who I think are interesting. I did bring forward non-Muslim philosophers on this point, and Christian ones in particular, to show that this is by no means a specifically Muslim position for which I am arguing (i.e., that one cannot predicate contradictions of God).
Actually, no. Conciliar Christian theology says that he has a human will, but NOT a human person. The subject/person of the Incarnation is the Logos, who is, obviously, a divine person.
This doesn’t answer any of the objections that I put to the idea of the Incarnation as contradictory. Instead you just restate the problem. The questions pertain to the relation between the Logos and the assumed human nature. Did the Logos change or not in the assumption of the human nature? If yes, you have a contradiction in the being of God. If no (which is generally the Christian answer), then either the human nature somehow constitutes, eternally, who the Logos is (again contradicting the being of God), or there was no incarnation.
Not really a meaningless agreement, though, I suspect we will find that we don’t actually agree about the implications. God’s already total, intimate and complete relationship to the creation was yet another objection to the Incarnation that was raised back in the original thread. I mentioned it, again, here (though you may not have read down that far yet. I know you said you were pushed for time).
On the contrary, I have argued that God cannot do that which contradicts God, and that it is inappropriate to predicate contradictions to God.
We would agree on this. It is for instance appropriate to say all sorts of things about God (i.e., God is the One), but we do not think that idea we might have of the One encapsulates or completely contains God. God is beyond our thought. This still does NOT allow one to predicate contradictions.
I don’t know why you are bringing up paradoxes, since the objection was specifically to contradiction, and a set of contradictions, regarding the Incarnation, were twice offered. If you would like to argue that they are not contradictions, but are instead ‘paradoxes’, you should feel free to do so. You could define the term (which I assume would have to involve explaining how paradoxes can be rationally held…as opposed to Zeno’s paradoxes for instance, where you are not supposed to hold the conclusions at all, even though the premises and arguments are sound and the conclusions are not logical impossibilities), explain why the Incarnation is a paradox and not a contradiction, and how we can tell the difference between the two.
I have only ever been interested in contradictions. God does not do that which contradicts God, and it is inappropriate to predicate contradictions to God. I listed what I took to be contradictions regarding to the doctrine of the Incarnation. There is no demonization here, and “contradiction” is not some inappropriately pejorative term. If you do not think they are contradictions, you should say why.
What I said here is that once one allows that contradictions can be predicated of God, then the language becomes nonsense and any old non-sequitur will do (i.e., that it doesn’t matter what you say).
The argument was that one cannot predicate contradictions of God, and that God cannot do that which contradicts God. Thomas and Anselm just happen to agree with me on this matter.