philosophy and religion

[nebula]

It is common for hte sects to argue that Christianity became contaminated by Greek philosophy soon after the death of the apostles (think of any kind of ‘restorationist’ movement) and therefore doesn’t represent authentic Christianity. But, does this make sense? For instance, Paul speaks in Greek philosophical terms, think of the 3 levels of heaven in Corinthians, or think about John’s Logos in John 1:1, or the division between the ‘shadows’ and the reality in Hebrews, classic neo Platonic ideas. That doesn’t mean that the New Testament authors accepted neo Platonism fully, but it does suggest that their world was so suffesed by neo Platonic cosmology that they internalized it to the point of using it as the background to their basic thoughts about reality. It is akin to our vision of the universe as an expanding balloon of spacetime with billions and billions of stars, we just accept that as the way reality is constructed, taht is our cosmology just as neo platonic ideas were the cosmology of the New Testament times. This idea extend to Old Testament authors as well, think of the cosmology of Genesis-- earth as a platform with a domed sky above which are the waters of heaven. That is simply how they thought of reality. There is no such thing as ‘pure’ Jewish thinking perverted by those darned Greeks, or Babylonians, or Persians, or Assyrians, or Egyptians…

Now it seems reasonable to me that God when communicating important spiritual truths would work with us limited finite beings and speak in terms that we understand. If the ancients understood the earth to be a platform underneath a domed vault, then why not speak to them the essential truths in the terms that they could understand? Similarly with New Testament authors. We cannot help but be enmeshed in a certain way of thinking as much as our philosophy and science has revealed us- we are limited in that way. Why not use the tools available to us through our language and culture to try to more adequately, all the time, learn about spiritual truths as revealed by God? In other words, what is supposed to be so terrible about philosophy?? If that’s the most precise way we have of speaking, why shouldn’t it be employed? After all, every author of the Bible shows forth the fact that God uses our finite language, our finite understanding to reveal Himself to us,.

 

[BDawg]

In other words, what is supposed to be so terrible about philosophy?? If that’s the most precise way we have of speaking, why shouldn’t it be employed? After all, every author of the Bible shows forth the fact that God uses our finite language, our finite understanding to reveal Himself to us,.

Hi nebula,

Nobody argues that philosophy is all bad, or that it is bad to speak precisely. We argue that the Greek philosophers held certain views at odds with the original Hebrew and Christian revelations.

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)

 

[nebula]

Hi nebula,

Nobody argues that philosophy is all bad, or that it is bad to speak precisely. We argue that the Greek philosophers held certain views at odds with the original Hebrew and Christian revelations.

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)

bdawg,

Of course. Philosophers didn’t, and don’t, agree with each other to begin with. What I suggest is using philosophy as a tool, and that is precisely what was done in the early church, starting with the NT authors.

 

[BDawg]

bdawg,

Of course. Philosophers didn’t, and don’t, agree with each other to begin with. What I suggest is using philosophy as a tool, and that is precisely what was done in the early church, starting with the NT authors.

I have no problem with that. But the ECFs went beyond that, and adopted particular doctrines from the philosophers that were at odds with what went before. They rationalized this by insisting that the passages in the Bible that indicate, for instance, that God has a human form should be taken in an “allegorical” sense. In fact, this is exactly how the philosophers of that time dealt with nasty passages in Homer that said the same kind of stuff. For a good treatment of this, see Edwin Hatch’s The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity. It’s out of date in some ways, but very interesting.

 

[nebula]

I have no problem with that. But the ECFs went beyond that, and adopted particular doctrines from the philosophers that were at odds with what went before. They rationalized this by insisting that the passages in the Bible that indicate, for instance, that God has a human form should be taken in an “allegorical” sense. In fact, this is exactly how the philosophers of that time dealt with nasty passages in Homer that said the same kind of stuff. For a good treatment of this, see Edwin Hatch’s The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity. It’s out of date in some ways, but very interesting.

bdwag,

That’s because parts of the Bible make it sounds like God has physical parts, but other parts that God is Spirit (the heaven and the earth cannot contain Him). So you are left with a couple of options, you can harmonize the verses and assume taht the body parts ones were allegorical, and you do have precedence for that since God was also likened to other things like a mother, or having wings- clearly allegorical instances, OR you can assume that the verses in question do in fact deal with authors with two different views of God. I vote for the latter and argue that God revealed different aspects of Himself at different times to different groups of people- knowing our finitude and limitations, and that the SPirit version, having dominated by the time of Christ and reiterated in the NT is the most correct.

 

[BDawg]

bdwag,

That’s because parts of the Bible make it sounds like God has physical parts, but other parts that God is Spirit (the heaven and the earth cannot contain Him). So you are left with a couple of options, you can harmonize the verses and assume taht the body parts ones were allegorical, and you do have precedence for that since God was also likened to other things like a mother, or having wings- clearly allegorical instances, OR you can assume that the verses in question do in fact deal with authors with two different views of God. I vote for the latter and argue that God revealed different aspects of Himself at different times to different groups of people- knowing our finitude and limitations, and that the SPirit version, having dominated by the time of Christ and reiterated in the NT is the most correct.

Hi nebula,

I understand your point, but I think it’s overstated. When the biblical authors talk about having wings, or as a mother, it’s always in the context of a clear metaphor about His relationship with humans. (Gathering chicks under wings like a mother hen, etc., when talking about God’s loving care for humans.) Some of the references to God’s “hands” and “arm,” and things like that are the same way, but others are in stark contrast. What do you do with God covering Moses’ eyes and walking past him so Moses could only see God’s “back parts” (Exodus 33:22-23)? What do you do with the simple report that Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel “saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone” (Exodus 24:9-11)? How about the throne theophanies in Ezekiel 1:26-27, Revelation 4:2, and Acts 7:55-56? Sure, you can come up with some allegorical interpretation (e.g., “God’s back parts really mean…”) but usually the allegorical points people get out of these kinds of things have nothing to do with the narrative in the text.

As for your point that a more “spiritual” interpretation of God was dominant by the NT period, I’m not sure where you get this idea. Note that in other recent posts I quoted both Justin and Origen making blanket statements about the Jews believing God has a body in human form. I know there were exceptions (Philo was one,) but why would they make such sweeping generalizations if their own philosophical view of God was actually dominant among the Jews? Rather a self-defeating strategy, if you ask me.

I also think you overstate your case when you say that the New Testament supports the “spiritual” version. I understand there are verses that say “God is spirit” and “no man has seen God,” but I can provide evidence that Jewish Christians did not interpret those kinds of statements in the way later gentile Christians did. Let me know if you want to see what I can come up with.

 

[nebula]

Hi nebula,

I understand your point, but I think it’s overstated. When the biblical authors talk about having wings, or as a mother, it’s always in the context of a clear metaphor about His relationship with humans. (Gathering chicks under wings like a mother hen, etc., when talking about God’s loving care for humans.) Some of the references to God’s “hands” and “arm,” and things like that are the same way, but others are in stark contrast. What do you do with God covering Moses’ eyes and walking past him so Moses could only see God’s “back parts” (Exodus 33:22-23)? What do you do with the simple report that Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel “saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone” (Exodus 24:9-11)? How about the throne theophanies in Ezekiel 1:26-27, Revelation 4:2, and Acts 7:55-56? Sure, you can come up with some allegorical interpretation (e.g., “God’s back parts really mean…”) but usually the allegorical points people get out of these kinds of things have nothing to do with the narrative in the text.

As for your point that a more “spiritual” interpretation of God was dominant by the NT period, I’m not sure where you get this idea. Note that in other recent posts I quoted both Justin and Origen making blanket statements about the Jews believing God has a body in human form. I know there were exceptions (Philo was one,) but why would they make such sweeping generalizations if their own philosophical view of God was actually dominant among the Jews? Rather a self-defeating strategy, if you ask me.

I also think you overstate your case when you say that the New Testament supports the “spiritual” version. I understand there are verses that say “God is spirit” and “no man has seen God,” but I can provide evidence that Jewish Christians did not interpret those kinds of statements in the way later gentile Christians did. Let me know if you want to see what I can come up with.

bdawg,

I think you missed my point with the first paragraph. I argued that one strategy was to claim allegory, but that wasn’t a strategy I cared to take, so for me to defend in it now seems misguided (though obviously, it can always be done. All that I’d need to do is pull verses that point to God as spirit and claim they all must be harmonized therefore the verses mentioning body parts are ‘obviously’ metaphor, allegory, what have you.). I’m ready to admit that it was common to think about God as having a body, but in the ancient mind that didn’t mean that He was ‘one of us’, He was still wholly other and that is the main point. To the modern mind, God having a body indicates that He is somehow ‘one of us’, and that is wholly incorrect and diminishes
God to the point of no return.

In any case, let’s see your quotes so that we can put them in the context of the larger work and see where we go. I’d prefer to listen to Jewish voices speak for themselves, rather than early Christian leaders who may have a stake in caricaturizing Jewish beliefs.

 

[BDawg]

Hi Nebula,

Sorry about misinterpreting what you were saying. I actually think your point of view is the best way to reconcile the mainstream Christian doctrine of God with the historical record. (By this, I do not mean that Mormons don’t have to do any reconciling. I’m just saying that Catholics, Mormons, and everyone else tend to have very naive views about how their beliefs relate to history. People who actually look into history, however, have to work harder.)

Anyway, I wrote another little essay for you, which I am pasting below. Hope you like it.

God as Invisible Spirit

Although some people will admit that the ancient Israelites saw God as anthropomorphic, they qualify this by saying that by the time the New Testament was written, they had given up such primitive notions. In support of this position, they cite two types of passages that either say God is spiritual, or that He has never been seen. I believe there is good evidence that early Jewish Christians would have interpreted these passages in a manner consistent with Old Testament anthropomorphism.

I have already quoted the early Christian philosophers, Origen and Justin, saying that in the second and third centuries, the Jews and some Christians believed God had a body in human form. I also cited the Clementine Homilies, a second-century Jewish Christian document, which says God has a body in human form. A number of Jewish scholars have also pointed out that, in the Rabbinic period (ca. 70-500 A.D.) the Jewish teachers were mainly anthropomorhites. For example, Guy Stroumsa of Hebrew University says, “Jewish anthropomorphism seems to have been notorious in the first centuries C.E.” (Gedaliahu G. Stroumsa, 1983, “Form(s) of God: Some Notes on Metatron and Christ,” Harvard Theological Review 76, 269-288.) More quotations by these scholars have been collected in a very nice (but LARGE) article by LDS philosophy professor, Dave Paulson. (David L. Paulsen, 1996, “The Doctrine of Divine Embodiment: Restoration, Judeo-Christian, and Philosophical Perspectives, 35, 7-94. This article can be downloaded here.)

God is Spirit

Mainstream Christians often object that the Bible says that “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24 KJV), but Mormons can make a couple points about this.

First, there is no indefinite article (a, an) in ancient Greek, so modern translations usually render this “God is Spirit,” in parallel with their rendering of a couple other such statements by John-- “God is light” (1 John 1:5), and “God is love” (1 John 4:8). (We wouldn’t say that God is “a light” or “a love.”)

Second, saying something is “spiritual” obviously did not mean that it is disembodied or incorporeal to the first Christians. Paul called the resurrection body “a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:44), but clearly he didn’t mean that it was incorporeal, because he also said that Christ would “change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Phil. 3:21), and clearly Christ’s resurrection body was corporeal. “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39). Embodiment must have been important, because Paul continued his statement about Christ’s glorious body in Phil. 3:21, saying that it is because of this body that Christ can subdue all things! “…according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.” Anglican scholar Christopher Stead explains what it would have meant to a Hebrew mind to say that God is spiritual.

By saying that God is spiritual, we do not mean that he has no body . . . but rather that he is the source of a mysterious life-giving power and energy that animates the human body, and himself possesses this energy in the fullest measure. (Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, 98.)

Another Anglican historian (and Bishop of London,) J.W.C. Wand, explained that later Christians got the idea that spiritual things are necessarily incorporeal from Neoplatonism. “It is easy to see what influence this school of thought * must have had upon Christian leaders. It was from it that they learnt what was involved in a metaphysical sense by calling God a Spirit.” (J.W.C Wand, A History of the Early Church to A.D. 500, New York, Routledge, 1994, 140.) (Note: I would argue that they got the idea from Middle Platonism, and developed it further with Neoplatonism. Also, Tertullian believed God was a material substance, but not that the Father had a human form.)

The Invisible God

Another objection often raised is that God the Father can’t really have a body in human form, because John said, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18; cf. 1 John 4:12). Maybe some people did have visions of God the Father, where he appeared in human form, but that must have simply been some kind of visionary image to help people relate to God. For instance, Stephen said he saw “the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). The Father must have had some kind of human-like form for Jesus to be seen on his “right hand.” Likewise, John saw the Father seated on the heavenly throne in Revelation 4. If these visions represented physical reality, why did John repeatedly say that “no man has seen God”?

It must first be understood that although Mormons always talk about how some men (including Joseph Smith) have seen God the Father, we technically don’t believe that a “man” can see God. Rather, humans must be transfigured–i.e. transformed into a heavenly being to withstand the presence of a celestial being. For example, in the Book of Moses, part of the LDS book of scripture, the Pearl of Great Price, it says, “And he saw God face to face, and he talked with him, and the glory of God was upon Moses; therefore Moses could endure his presence” (Moses 1:2). But when Satan appeared to Moses, he was rejected because Moses did not have to be transfigured to see him. “For behold, I could not look upon God, except his glory should come upon me, and I were transfigured before him. But I can look upon thee in the natural man” (Moses 1:14).

This solves a significant riddle in the Bible, which is described in the Oxford Companion to the Bible.

A deity’s physical manifestation is seen by human beings. The appearance of gods and their involvement with humans are common motifs in acient Near Eastern and classical mythology. That similar phenomena are found in the Bible seems problematic at first, for a persistent tradition in the Hebrew Bible affirmed that death comes to any human who sees God (Gen. 16:13; 32:30; 24:10-11; 33:20; Deut. 5:24-26; 18:16; Judg. 6:22-23; 13:22; cf. Exod. 20:19; Isa. 6:5). In most of these contexts, however, the narration undermines this sentiment by depicting the pleasant surprise of those who survive. The text presents this perspective as a misperception to which human beings subscribe, for no humans in the Bible ever die simply because they have seen God. On the contrary, throughout the Bible God wants to communicate intimately with humans. the problem of how God can adequately show himself to humankind without harm is a conundrum that is never really resolved in the Bible. (Samuel A. Meier, “Theophany,” in Metzger and Coogan, eds., The Oxford Companion to the Bible, 740.)

But if the Bible never offers a solution to the conundrum, is our solution the correct one? It turns out that the Clementine Homilies (the same early Jewish Christian work mentioned above that teaches God has a body in human form,) gives essentially the same explanation for how a person can see God the Father.

*For I maintain that the eyes of mortals cannot see the incorporeal form of the Father or Son, because it is illumined by exceeding great light. . . . For he who sees God cannot live. For the excess of light dissolves the flesh of him who sees; unless by the secret power of God the flesh be changed into the nature of light, so that it can see light. . . . (Clementine Homilies 17:16.)

This kind of thing was actually pretty common in the Jewish and Jewish Christian periods, especially in apocalyptic literature like the Enoch texts, the Ascension of Isaiah, and so on. The visionary was changed into a heavenly being (sometimes in stages if there was more than one heaven), and then had a vision of God on the throne. Sometimes God’s face couldn’t be seen, however, because of the overpowering Glory. For more information on early Jewish and Christian texts that talk about ascension through the heavens, and transformation of the visionary into heavenly beings that could behold God’s form, see Methodist scholar Margaret Barker’s book On Earth As It is in Heaven: Temple Symbolism in the New Testament.

All of this, of course, cannot guarantee that the mainstream Christian doctrine of God wasn’t a legitimate development. However, I think it does add plausibility to Joseph Smith’s claim to have restored some ancient knowledge about God.

 

[BDawg]

I’m ready to admit that it was common to think about God as having a body, but in the ancient mind that didn’t mean that He was ‘one of us’, He was still wholly other and that is the main point. To the modern mind, God having a body indicates that He is somehow ‘one of us’, and that is wholly incorrect and diminishes God to the point of no return.

Hi again,

How could God have been thought of as “wholly other,” if the Bible says that God created man in His own “image” and “likeness”? Whatever interpretation you place on those terms, it seems to me that the message is that humans are in some ways quite a lot like God. Maybe one of the “main points” of the Biblical message about God is that He is so far superior to mankind that the distance between them seems almost infinite. But “wholly other”? That kind of thing comes straight out of Greek philosophy, and so I think of this as a case where you are adopting assumptions from the philosophers–not just using it as a sort of reasoning tool.

The Mormon message that humans have the potential to become like God does not diminish God. God is what He is, and that is the ruler of the Universe, the one who speaks and His will is done. Our message is that humans are a sinful, groveling lot, who need Divine Intervention to even get on the right track to realize that kind of potential. The only way this view could “diminish” God is if you somehow think that being incorporeal is “better” than being corporeal. Why?

 

[nebula]

Hi again,

How could God have been thought of as “wholly other,” if the Bible says that God created man in His own “image” and “likeness”? Whatever interpretation you place on those terms, it seems to me that the message is that humans are in some ways quite a lot like God. Maybe one of the “main points” of the Biblical message about God is that He is so far superior to mankind that the distance between them seems almost infinite. But “wholly other”? That kind of thing comes straight out of Greek philosophy, and so I think of this as a case where you are adopting assumptions from the philosophers–not just using it as a sort of reasoning tool.

The Mormon message that humans have the potential to become like God does not diminish God. God is what He is, and that is the ruler of the Universe, the one who speaks and His will is done. Our message is that humans are a sinful, groveling lot, who need Divine Intervention to even get on the right track to realize that kind of potential. The only way this view could “diminish” God is if you somehow think that being incorporeal is “better” than being corporeal. Why?

I don’t think I’m assuming things from that darned ‘Greek’ philosophy when casting God as other. That’s the whole point. What kind of human can speak things into existence? What kind of human is of the sort that seeing Him can mean destruction? God is “holy, holy, holy” and His glory fills the heavens and earth.

If I may venture a thought: I am identifying the person of God with Ultimate Reality, that is God is the eternal, infinite ground of existence. Correct me if I am wrong here, but I would say that you are positing that the ultimate ground of existence, the rules of the cosmos are a separate entity from the person of God. In that latter idea Mormonism does have a great deal of power, the problem of evil is diminished for one, and God becomes more approachable as a person who has discovered and used the laws of the cosmos to utter perfection, and in so doing represents them but also is separate from them. You can label this however you wish, but I seek to worship the source of existence itself, the founder of the laws of the cosmos, the ultimate sustainer of the universe. Not doing so put me at a profound unease which led to my abandonment of Mormonism, because God as Being itself is who I prayed to, the whole time.

I argue that hints of this are found in the Hebrew Bible, when God speaks things into existence, when God labels Himself as YHWH, when God cannot be contained by the heavens or the earth, when God transcends His creation (he is not in the storm, in the wind), but it isn’t those hints in the Bible that are the grounding of my faith. It is because the idea of the infinite God makes so much sense that the Bible makes sense, not vice versa (at least in my case, I’m not sure I care to generalize everything about this statement now)-- especially since I concede that there are varying views of God presented in the Hebrew Bible, some corporeal, some incorporeal, some which emphasize a universal power, some which seem to be more restrictive.

I accede that the last paragraph opens me up to the charge that you laid out: that I put philosophy first and special revelation second. But I ask, by what means do we accept special revelation as even reasonable? Use of our reason has to come first. When trying to synthesize special and general revelation, perhaps the Greeks simply asked the right questions when it comes to sorting out general revelation and so no matter what answer we come up starting from those questions the answer will look a bit ‘Greek’. That is, why does something exist, and not nothing? Where does existence come from at all? What does it mean to even be?

 

[nebula]

oh yes, as to your second response, I’ll try to take my time more with that one since you obviously did such a nice job crafting it. It puts my not-even-proofread responses to shame.

 

[BDawg]

I don’t think I’m assuming things from that darned ‘Greek’ philosophy when casting God as other. That’s the whole point. What kind of human can speak things into existence? What kind of human is of the sort that seeing Him can mean destruction? God is “holy, holy, holy” and His glory fills the heavens and earth.

Hi nebula,

I don’t think casting God as “other” is an importation from Greek philosophy. I’m talking about casting God as “wholly other.” That is directly contrary to the Biblical message, if you ask me, since God is said to have made man in his image and likeness. How can anything that is “wholly other” be revealed to humans, in any case, since we would have no reference point to understand it? The post-Nicene and Medieval theologians went so far with this “wholly other” business that they adopted a “negative theology,” which meant that they couldn’t say anything about what God is–only about what He isn’t. Here is a Wikipedia article about it, if you aren’t familiar. It was big in Neoplatonism, and in pretty much all mystical traditions that try to teach people how to have mystical experiences where they feel some connection with the “infinite.” But these experiences aren’t really “revelations,” like we see reported in the Bible, because no positive knowledge is revealed. Rather, the mystics talk about a “cloud of unknowing,” and that sort of thing.

Do you go this far? That is, are you saying that we can only speak about what God is, or doesn’t do? If not, do you take some middle way? If you take a middle way, isn’t that similar to Mormonism, except that we disagree about how far toward one end or the other the truth is?

 

[nebula]

Hi nebula,

I don’t think casting God as “other” is an importation from Greek philosophy. I’m talking about casting God as “wholly other.” That is directly contrary to the Biblical message, if you ask me, since God is said to have made man in his image and likeness. How can anything that is “wholly other” be revealed to humans, in any case, since we would have no reference point to understand it? The post-Nicene and Medieval theologians went so far with this “wholly other” business that they adopted a “negative theology,” which meant that they couldn’t say anything about what God is–only about what He isn’t. Here is a Wikipedia article about it, if you aren’t familiar. It was big in Neoplatonism, and in pretty much all mystical traditions that try to teach people how to have mystical experiences where they feel some connection with the “infinite.” But these experiences aren’t really “revelations,” like we see reported in the Bible, because no positive knowledge is revealed. Rather, the mystics talk about a “cloud of unknowing,” and that sort of thing.

Do you go this far? That is, are you saying that we can only speak about what God is, or doesn’t do? If not, do you take some middle way? If you take a middle way, isn’t that similar to Mormonism, except that we disagree about how far toward one end or the other the truth is?

Ooops, I didn’t answer that question at all. We are made in his likeness and image because He has given us spirits, not just material bodies. I don’t think this is just a matter of degree for the following reason: we are completely and utterly dependent on God for our very existence at every moment, whereas in Mormonism we have an independent existence. I hope that answers the question, the dichtomy, the ‘wholly otherness’- the qualitative difference- that I see is between infinite and finite, independent and dependent, and so on.

 

[BDawg]

Hi nebula,

Can I just say how nice it’s been to discuss this with you? I like to cite sources and such when I post here, mainly because I don’t see any reason why anyone should believe anything just because I say it. But I don’t expect anyone to just roll over and accept everything I’m saying just because of those sources–there are always different ways to interpret evidence. It frustrates me, though, how often people get really mad at me for trying to support my points, because they say I’m treating such-and-such person as “infallible,” or they say I’m thinking that I’ve “proved” something when they can see some alternative explanation. I think it’s mainly just part of the larger problem of “black-and-white” thinking, and lack of confidence. Some people are just never-ending fountains of insults, which is maybe a different story. You, on the other hand, don’t seem to get worked up at all about it. You seem to pull off taking what I say seriously without feeling obligated to agree with it or freak out about it. Anyway, I appreciate it.

 

[BDawg]

Ooops, I didn’t answer that question at all. We are made in his likeness and image because He has given us spirits, not just material bodies. I don’t think this is just a matter of degree for the following reason: we are completely and utterly dependent on God for our very existence at every moment, whereas in Mormonism we have an independent existence. I hope that answers the question, the dichtomy, the ‘wholly otherness’- the qualitative difference- that I see is between infinite and finite, independent and dependent, and so on.

I think I understand, but to me that seems like just one aspect of God. He is different from us in that way, but similar in other ways. Would you agree?

 

[nebula]

I think I understand, but to me that seems like just one aspect of God. He is different from us in that way, but similar in other ways. Would you agree?

bdawg,

I want to reciprocate the feelings, this has been the most enjoyable interchange I have ever had on an internet forum. Religion is such a touchy topic that it can become emotional very fast, especially when it comes to apostates, as I am, trying to talk to active members. There is always an understandable cloud of suspicion involved. Anyway, thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt and taking the time to understand my position. At this point I trust that you know what you are talking about and realize when it comes to reconstructing what ancient Hebrews believe there is a lot to debate and educated scholars defending several different points of view. In the future I will restrain from stating my position as an absolute.

As far as God goes, yes I agree with that. He made us to be similar to Him in that we have an intellect and will (our spirit).

 

[BDawg]

At this point I trust that you know what you are talking about and realize when it comes to reconstructing what ancient Hebrews believe there is a lot to debate and educated scholars defending several different points of view.

Yep, I can agree with that. Except that I’m not sure it’s fair to say I know what I’m talking about.

I’m ok with scholarly fuzziness. I’m an academic myself (although I’m in the natural sciences,) and you can hardly expect to get perfect consensus with that many giant egos bumping up against each other.

 

[BDawg]

I don’t mean to give the impression that I think Greek philosophy was all bad. Mormons believe that “the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word, yea, in wisdom, all that he seeth fit that they should have” (Alma 29:8). In 1978, our First Presidency issued a statement saying that many religious leaders and others “such as Mohammed, Confucius, and the Reformers, as well as the philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and others, received a portion of God’s light … to enlighten whole nations.”

But Greek philosophy can’t have been completely good, either, given Paul’s warning. “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Col. 2:8). Since Paul didn’t say exactly what to look out for, on the other hand, we may not ever agree about it.

On the other hand, since I have sort of a large ego and a big mouth, I am happy to fill you in on what I think the problem is. The problem with Greek philosophy in general was a penchant for reasoning about unobservable entities that are the fundamental units of existence (e.g., Democritus’s atoms or Plato’s “One,”) without rigorously checking their reasoning against experience. In the realm of physical experience, for example, Democritus’s theory of atoms never gained much traction until the beginning of the Scientific Revolution. The new breed of natural philosophers started with some conceptual metaphor, like “atoms” as fundamental building blocks of matter, and then performed very careful observations and experiments of how matter behaves. They then tried to develop the metaphor to explain their results. Many times, it has turned out that initial conceptions of what matter fundamentally is have been inadequate, so our idea of “atoms” has changed from indivisible chunks, to sort of a pudding of positive and negative charge, to mini solar systems, to tiny positively charged nuclei surrounded by clouds of “electron probability distribution,” where electrons behave in some ways like vibrational waves on a string instrument, and in some ways like physical particles. Now, in order to explain everything, you have things like “String Theory,” where the conceptual metaphor is that everything is made up of 1-dimensional “strings” that curl around in up to 26 dimensions. The moral? When humans start reasoning about things that are well beyond our direct experience, we tend to extrapolate from what we know, but then when we test our extrapolations rigorously, we find that we keep having to make our stories stranger and stranger.

Plato’s reasoning about what “the One” must be like is brilliant stuff, and I think he was on the right track, in some respects. Once again, he was making extrapolations from direct human experience to reason through what the “ground of Being” must be like–in some ways like the observable world, and in other ways the opposite. But once again, it would have been ridiculous to him to suggest that he should test his ideas against experience—in Plato’s view, reason trumps experience, (see his allegory of the cave in the Republic.) So when I see Plato’s ideas about God as the “Ground of Being” (as reinterpreted in Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism) being adopted into Christianity and remaining static for centuries, my alarm bells go off. I can follow his reasoning and see that he was making plenty of assumptions that cannot be known a priori. It seems obvious that there must be some things that “just exist” and others that develop from that, but I see no reason why the “ground of Being” has to be a Person. Is there even such a thing as “Being Itself” that exists independently? Why can’t matter and intelligence be the things that “just exist” in the Universe?

You can claim that this conception of God has been tested, because it allows the Bible to make more sense to you, but I don’t really buy that. The Bible, more than anything else, is a record of people’s dealings with God. Sure, there may be some different opinions expressed about God’s nature, but I don’t see how God as “Being Itself,” who has no “body, parts, or passions,” provides so much better an explanation for the experiences these people recorded. It seems to me that it is a hindrance to understanding, because you have to constantly engage in special pleading about why God appeared to so many people in human form when he has no body, and why three Persons are called God when God has no “parts,” and why they always talk about the wrath or love or mercy of God when he has no “passions.” The biblical prophets don’t seem to have had “mystical” experiences with a “cloud of unknowing,” or anything like that. They experienced God in a much more concrete way, and they don’t seem to have come to those experiences with the aid of complex meditation techniques. God just showed up.

To summarize, I think that when humans reason about things like the “Ground of Being,” they start with their own experience, and reason about what such unobservables might be like. The most successful strategy for this kind of reasoning regarding the natural world has been to constantly test it against observations, and if there is a problem, it’s usually (though not always) assumed to lie with the reasoning rather than the observations. Conversely, I think most of Christian theology, over the last 1800 years or so, has generally gone with the assumption that the problem must be with the observations.

I believe the Mormons have the better way of going about “doing Theology,” in this case. We are fine with speculating about the “Ground of Being,” and that sort of thing, but that speculation has to be firmly grounded in experience. And if we haven’t really settled many questions about the “Ground of Being,” we figure that the truth is probably too weird for humans to fully grasp, anyway, so it’s fine to leave that sort of thing on the shelf for the time being, until we get some more data. This is why we don’t get too worked up about differences of opinion about how “official” the King Follett Discourse should be viewed. The really solid stuff is closer to human experience, while questions about what it’s like to be Eternal, or when the absolute “beginning” was, or what the “Ground of all Being” is, or whatever, are sort of “frontier” doctrines that cannot be considered “fundamentals,” because they are so far from normal human experience.

 

[zerinus]

I don’t mean to give the impression that I think Greek philosophy was all bad. Mormons believe that “the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word, yea, in wisdom, all that he seeth fit that they should have” (Alma 29:8). In 1978, our First Presidency issued a statement saying that many religious leaders and others “such as Mohammed, Confucius, and the Reformers, as well as the philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and others, received a portion of God’s light … to enlighten whole nations.”

But Greek philosophy can’t have been completely good, either, given Paul’s warning. “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Col. 2:8). Since Paul didn’t say exactly what to look out for, on the other hand, we may not ever agree about it.

---

There is nothing wrong with philosophy as a thing in itself—provided that its limitations are recognized. Philosophy is the precursor of modern science. Modern science is the continuation of ancient “natural philosophy”. At one time the terms “philosophy” and “science” were nearly interchangeable. It is with the rise of the modern experimental science that what we now call “science” began to diverge from mainstream philosophy and become a separate branch of human knowledge.

Aristotle believed that you discover truth by just thinking about it. Well, he was largely right. You still discover truth by thinking about it—except that we now believe that you have to verify what you think you have discovered by suitable experiments. There are some kinds of truths, however, that cannot be verified by experiment. Moral truth, for example, is something that you still discover with you mind, but cannot verify by experiment. So there is nothing wrong with philosophy as a thing in itself. It is only when we substitute it for revelation, or think it is superior to revelation (as some do) that it becomes wrong, as the Book of Mormon teaches:

2 Nephi 9:

28 O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish.

29 But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God.

Any branch of human knowledge is okay provided you do not let it get into your head, and think that you know better than God, or that it makes you independent of the revelations of God.

zerinus

 

[nebula]

bdawg,

What subject do you teach? If you don’t mind me asking.

Anyway, I should clarifiy that I didn’t accept God as the ground of Being because that explains the BIble better, I came to the conclusion that God is the ground of Being first, and the Bible came second. Why does the ground of Being need to be a person? Because only a person has will (that is part of the definition of what a person is, a rational agent with a will), the will being necessary to will things into existence and sustain them. If I didn’t think the Bible accomodated this view at all, I’d reject the Bible, since I came to God first. I know this is reverse of the normal, American Christian sentiment, but I wasn’t raised with a reverence of the Bible as somehow an infallible authority because, well, it is, so whatever feelings I have from the Bible flow from my experiences with God.

Where I argue that the argument from contingency is different from Democritus supposing that there are atoms without any kind of actual empirical experiments to back up that statement is that the argument from contingency has to do with conditions surrounding existence itself. I disagree that it isn’t related to experience, it is intimately related to everyday experience, every time we assume that there is a causal relationship between any two events the argument from contingency (and hence God as the ground of Being) lurks in the background. The argument is valid whether or not God appeared to ancient Hebrews as a Person with bodily parts, or whether they then interpreted that to mean that He really does have bodily Parts as an integral part of HIs very nature or not. That’s why it seems a little beside the point to me (though not entirely) what the ancient Hebrews literally thought. Yes, God communicates to us through revelation, but He also communicates to us through His creation, and it is to the latter revelation that I make my appeal. It isn’t possible to ever completely untangle special revelation from the specific historical contexts in which it was made, the language, the culture, the surroudning mythology and philosophy… but general revelation, as given in creation is something that we can all appeal to and think about without first needing to learn Hebrew, study near eastern civlizations our entire lives, etc.

To conclude on a personal note, I would say that I don’t find thoughts about the ground of Being far removed from my experience at all. God’s infinite and necessary nature is something that completely and utterly changes my experience of Him, it has changed everything and that is no exaggeration. That is why I belabor the point, I dont’ think this is some pendantic point, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I wish I could explain this adequately, but not only do I appeal to reason when discussing the nature of God, personally I reflect on my intimate experiences and faith with God. If this wasn’t of supreme importance in my life of faith, chances are I’d remain a Mormon.