"Kierkegaard was right. The only appropriate response to questions regarding the mystery of God is silence.
Throughout the ages, academicians sought to establish themselves as great thinkers, capable of divining the very essence of God, by using reason and constructing with words the answers to unsolvable questions. "Look at me, I've used reason to figure out what God is." To even suggest that one has is ridiculous and tells us more about what the writer thinks of himself than anything about what God is.
God is a paradox. Any knowledge of "it" is inaccessible through reason."
Perhaps.
Perhaps it is so that we cannot reason our way to accurate knowledge about God.
It does not follow, however, that God cannot simply REVEAL such knowledge, and understanding of it to us. I do not mean "some limiting understanding of it either", for that presumes to limit God. If God wants us to understand the whole thing, he is certainly capable of doing that, in an instant. Whatever limitations we have are not barriers to GOD willing whatever he wants. Were God to want to make us all gods in our own right, God could do it in a flash.
He doesn't, because He doesn't want to.
We can't reason our way to the right answers, but there have been people who have simply been GIVEN right answers to various different questions and puzzles, by God, directly through divine revelation. I do not speak here merely of the period of the prophets and the apostles either. There have been Saints since, in ever age, who have talked to God and angels and told us about it.
And the things they tell us, to the extent that God made them clear, are not arrivable at by reason, but are true nonetheless, because they are arrived at by FIAT, God's.
Potency and act are Aristotelian terms. They're tied into his solution of "the problem of change."
It's a nice phrase -- "pure," something wholesome and uncontaminated like God, and "act," something we associate with power -- but what do the two words mean together?
Very briefly, unlike all other things God's nature is being, with no admixture of potential or potency.
This conforms with Scripture, where He reveals His name, "I AM WHO AM."
And doesn't the term "will" imply or presume some decision-making capabilities?
Not necessarily. God's will is simple, eternal, and fixed.
Is the Will of God changeable?If God does not "decide" anything because there is no before or after for him, how does he "do" anything? Doesn't action, like deliberation, require time?On the contrary, It is said: "God is not as a man, that He should lie, nor as the son of man, that He should be changed" (Numbers 23:19).
I answer that, The will of God is entirely unchangeable. On this point we must consider that to change the will is one thing; to will that certain things should be changed is another. It is possible to will a thing to be done now, and its contrary afterwards; and yet for the will to remain permanently the same: whereas the will would be changed, if one should begin to will what before he had not willed; or cease to will what he had willed before. This cannot happen, unless we presuppose change either in the knowledge or in the disposition of the substance of the willer. For since the will regards good, a man may in two ways begin to will a thing. In one way when that thing begins to be good for him, and this does not take place without a change in him. Thus when the cold weather begins, it becomes good to sit by the fire; though it was not so before. In another way when he knows for the first time that a thing is good for him, though he did not know it before; hence we take counsel in order to know what is good for us. Now it has already been shown that both the substance of God and His knowledge are entirely unchangeable (9, 1; 14, 15). Therefore His will must be entirely unchangeable.
God is pure "do," or "act." We see the effects of God's simple will unfolding in time in Creation.
Objection 4. Further, God does not will of necessity what He wills, as said before (3). Therefore He can both will and not will the same thing. But whatever can incline to either of two opposites, is changeable substantially; and that which can exist in a place or not in that place, is changeable locally. Therefore God is changeable as regards His will.Kierkegaard was right. The only appropriate response to questions regarding the mystery of God is silence.Reply to Objection 4. Although God's willing a thing is not by absolute necessity, yet it is necessary by supposition, on account of the unchangeableness of the divine will, as has been said above (3).
How does Kierkegaard know? Does he know all that can be known about God? If not, then he has no basis for making such a statement. If he does know all that can be known about God, he contradicts himself.
Kierkegaard is wrong. We can know some things about the nature of God a posteriori, by his effects.
Is the existence of God demonstrable?
Throughout the ages, academicians sought to establish themselves as great thinkers, capable of divining the very essence of God, by using reason and constructing with words the answers to unsolvable questions. "Look at me, I've used reason to figure out what God is." To even suggest that one has is ridiculous and tells us more about what the writer thinks of himself than anything about what God is.
I have suggested that, so it should be easy to refute these ridiculous arguments. Be my guest.
God is a paradox.
How?
Any knowledge of "it" is inaccessible through reason.
How do you know?
Can you refute any of St. Thomas' arguments?
Once you put it into words, you destroy the very knowledge you have sought to acquire.
How?
Buddhists, by and large, understand this and gain knowledge of some aspects of reality through meditation, the results of which remain unspoken.
How do you know that they have knowledge of some aspects of reality if they remain unspoken? How was this knowledge communicated to you?
(It makes complete sense to answer a question about the nature of God by asking another question, as asking the qestions is all you can do.)
How do you know? Do you know all that can be known about God? How did you get this knowledge?
OTOH, St. Thomas makes arguments regarding the nature of God that can't be contradicted by reason. If you know of some other method of contradiction aside from reason and speech, you will not be able to communicate it to anyone else.
"Pure act" is mental masturbation designed by self-described pious men who sought to have others think highly of them. It gets us no closer to understanding the nature of God than if we said that God was green cheese.
How can you make such a remark when you don't know the meaning of the Aristotelian terms? It seems to me that you are coming into this with some strongly held fideistic beliefs.