Absolutely. On my personal reflections, we humans are participations in ultimate, eternal Being, our source and our sustainer. Philosophers love to quibble about the distinction between "being" and "existence." "Life" encompasses both meanings. Yet to me, it's simple: All living creatures "exist" -- that is, are alive. Even the inanimate world can be said to "exist" in some sense.
Yet of all the creatures, man is the only one who "IS" uniquely in himself. Man possesses, not only soul, but nous, a gift of God. Via this means, he is capable of developing self-consciousness, which is the very basis of human reason and intelligence. It also guides the mortal course of the person, and makes him responsible for the choices he makes, which are ultimately subject to divine judgement.
This idea goes far, far back into the ancient world. As far as I know, Plato was the first to isolate and qualify nous, seeing it as having only two possible loci (for lack of a better word), divine and human.
Evidently, Plato believed God was perfectly unintelligible to the human mind. He is the God "Beyond," not only "beyond" the physical cosmos which he caused, but also utterly beyond human comprehension. In principle. But that doesn't mean divine-human communication is impossible. Indeed, it seems Socrates swore by it -- he "felt" the divine "pulls" and responded....
Funny thing is, Plato thought man was the eikon or "image" of the Cosmos. That is, he conceived the entire hierarchy of being was recapitulated in man himself, from the highest level, divine Nous, to human nous, to feeling/passion, through the biological, vegetative, and inorganic levels, finally bottoming out in the Apeiron, the fathomless Depth of all that "exists," out of which everything physical comes, and back into which everything physical goes in due course of time.
According to Anaximander, the Apeiron is the unlimited, indefinite, unbounded. It is the 'unlimited' source of all particular things. Because it transcends all limits, it is in principle undefinable.
So Plato's great hierarchy of Being puts the divine at the summit, and the divine at its base. Both these "poles" are unknowable by man directly. But man lives his life "in between" these two poles....
Notwithstanding the mythical quality here, flashes of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and quantum mechanics always seem to come to my mind at this point.... But I digress.
I wanted to tell you where the great second-century A.D. philosopher Justin Martyr took the Platonic insights. He'd been an avid student of philosophy from his youth, had been through the different philosophical schools of the day, and found them wanting. Eventually, he found Plato's school, which was still going through successors. Then he found Christianity. It was Justin who first realized that Christ was not only the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophets, but He was also the fulfillment of classical philosophy.
Anyhoot, Justin Martyr would become the greatest evangelist of the Logos in the second century. He died a martyr for his faith. He has been sainted by the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
In closing, there's a profound difference between Plato's cosmology and Christianity. In Plato, man is the complete image of the Cosmos. In Christianity, man is made in the image of God Himself. Which probably explains where he got his nous from.
Thank you so much for writing, dear Brother xzins!
Back to the basic article, it seems to me that the Creator cannot be bound by the speed of light since it is a created thing. Therefore, it would seem to me that messengers of God also cannot be bound by the speed of light, since they are sent on their way by God, but are also created beings.
Therefore, I’m inclined to think that the speed of light might be a difficult barrier but not an impossible one.