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To: betty boop
Perhaps it is as you say, dear r9etb. However, this line of thinking seems panentheist to me

Eh, maybe ... though I'm certainly not advocating the pantheistic aspects of "panentheism." At the same time, I don't think that God has no fixed properties at all, and I further don't believe that God's nature is totally incomprehensible to humans (who are, after all, made in His image).

My first problem with the idea that God is "over," rather than "subject" to things like math and logic, is that the distinction is made at all -- it just doesn't seem necessary, except as an all-too-human attempt to define God's boundaries.

Further, I'm suspcious of the implication that things like math and logic are somehow arbitrary: essentially invented by God for our use, but having no essential contact with the true nature of God.

I confess I do not understand your resistance to the overall idea that something like math or logic reflects some aspect of God's true nature.

Maybe if I put it in the form of an analogy..... Perhaps math and logic are to God; as whatever it is about Bach's music, that makes it so recognizeably Bach's.

Bach is obviously not his music -- but the nature of his music is characteristic of Bach. The universe is not God; but the nature of the universe is characteristic of Him.

(I acknowledge the limitations of the analogy -- not the least being that Bach was a priori constrained by defined musical structures....)

What I'm suggesting, is nothing more (or less) than that math and logic work so well as a means of describing the universe, because they're characteristic of the way God does things. He's not "over" or "subject" to them at all -- they're just characteristic of who He is.

I recognize in myself an unfortunate tendency to become over-enamored of my own ideas, but I really can't see why my suggestion should be so problematic to you....

118 posted on 11/23/2010 10:56:01 AM PST by r9etb
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To: r9etb; Alamo-Girl; TXnMA; YHAOS; MHGinTN; xzins; Quix
I don't think that God has no fixed properties at all, and I further don't believe that God's nature is totally incomprehensible to humans (who are, after all, made in His image).

I think God has only one "fixed property": He cannot lie. Speculating about any others seems a tad above my pay grade.

I think the difference of views boils down to: It seems you view logic and mathematics as if they were effectively attributes of God, while I see them as creatures of God. That is, they unfolded from God's spoken Word in the Beginning — the Logos, Who was God and was with God. Since God cannot lie, we know they are "true"; and because it was God Who spoke the Word, we know they are not arbitrary, but built into the very fabric of the Creation, which itself is aimed at a final cause.... Because of them, the natural world is intelligible to the human mind, made in God's image.

I really liked your Bach analogy r9etb! (I've used something like it myself in the past, only substituting Michelangelo and his magnificent David.) And I take your point that Bach is somehow ineffably "in" his musical creations. And that he is "a priori constrained by defined musical structures." Perhaps we can say that Bach's music is the image of Bach, who in turn is the image of God....

God was never "constrained" by anything other than Truth (or so it seems to me) in the Beginning. And so He created mathematics and logic as fundamental structures of the natural world. He is not Himself the mathematics and logic — i.e., they are not merely attributes of the divine Nature — but they "reflect" Him, their truthful Source. Just as the music of J. S. Bach "reflects" his spirit.

Anyhoot, FWIW.

BTW, I'm not at all hostile to your view, r9etb. You ably describe what you see, and your analysis is engaging. It's just that I see things a little bit differently, I gather.

I'm not saying that my view is "better" than yours, only that it's not the same as yours.... And it's marvelous to discuss these issues with you!

Thank you so very much for sharing your insights with us!

120 posted on 11/23/2010 12:49:00 PM PST by betty boop (Seek truth and beauty together; you will never find them apart. — F. M. Cornford)
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