Posted on 11/30/2004 6:21:11 PM PST by betty boop
Precisely what I was trying to impart. It is by faith that we approach the presence of the Lord. Faith is the process of tuning into the presence of the Lord. To 'touch the hem' is an act of faith. Thank you for your wisdom, ckilmer.
I was hoping you would stick around and expand on this. Taliesan objected to the last clause, but this is the point that needs explaining. As to the first, you are on the money to mention this distinction between created and uncreated existence. If there is any possibility this idea of creation appears in Plato, it can only be detected as faint whisps, drafts, or some suggestive language. But did you have a passage in mind from one of the Fathers which speaks to this distinction? Vlossky might suggest some; I know Gregory of Nyssa in his books Contra Eunomium is very much involved in this distinction. Nyssan's critique is helpful because it demotes the status of language and places it in created existence and more exactly as the product of human creation. This is a very crucial issue, especially in the light of the teleological aspects of Pannenberg's scientific suggestions above. He speaks of a theology of nature (Did not Kant do this? Reason fulfills Nature?) One is obliged to distinguish how different created existence is from uncreated existence in order to fully understand whether the human person finds its end in nature or supernature. These thoughts are cursory, but hopefully you'll return to jump-start this fascinating topic.
Although not exclusively empiricist. The short-cut rendered by the painter Raphael is one of focus, not method. Aristotle the scientist was also Aristotle the Ethicist.
You have two things going here, as did Aristotle.
Perhaps this "luminosity" of the phronimos is but a spiced-up euphemism for mere empirical intuitions?
I must say the sublimation of "empirical science" into an exclusive domain chartered by sense perception is a wonderful theft.
We give science something akin to a monopoly on "fact" and "cause" here in the material world, because, empirically speaking, it works - it's been earned, not simply given. Scientific investigations of the material causes of disease have been rather more successful at curing disease than investigations which rely on the immaterial as an integral part of the explanation. Extending that monopoly to other sorts of truths, such as statements on the immaterial, would be a mistake, however.
It's true that success has some persuasion. But what is it? (I'd hate for it to sound like just another clonish variation of "A is A and that is all there is to say.") From what I gather, your thesis is supposed to have strengh enough to determine what part of A counts as success. Health of the body, without a doubt, will continue to rank high as a political end in years to come. Am I to presume that success likewise determines what are legimitate failures? And if we follow old-time Herodotus, our success in the Iraq is proof that the gods are with us.
Yes,and more, for when even the dogs called Him Son of David He stopped
Why, material success, of course. It's fairly likely that your material conditions are more conducive to physical life than the material conditions your great-grandparents labored under, just as their material conditions were rather more conducive to physical life than what their own great-grandparents had. Is that all there is to life? Of course not, but that's the part that is the rationalist's playground, in no small part because material conditions are readily measurable by those darned materialists. We may question whether materialism has a positive impact on one's spiritual life, but you'll have quite a task ahead of you if you intend to deny materialism's impact on the material world.
Yes! And there were many in the 'Legion.' And even the stones would have cried out. And the visiting 'wise men.' And King Herod, at least by proxy. And the Centurean whose son was healed must have had an inkling. And of course, his Mother and Elizabeth. And his Mother, Mary, again at the wedding. And the woman at the well, and the others that were healed. And the old man at the temple where Jesus spoke as a child. And the fig tree and the waters obeyed his voice.
To a Platonist, “separable form” is an inherently self-contradictory term: For if one were actually able to separate an existent from its “form,” it would no longer be what it is: It would be some other thing, or nothing at all. From the point of view of a Platonist, Aristotle’s study of creature thus involves an untenable reduction in the first place. (The human race is still quibbling over such distinctions, after all this time -- +2,500 years and counting.)
Aristotle, however, argued that the idea of separable form, living as it were in a transcendent realm, was perfectly redundant, superfluous; for what is ultimate in nature is not form, but substance. And since Aristotle thought of individual substances as hylomorphic compounds – that is, constituted of matter and form, the latter generated by means of movements of material bodies subject to the laws of causation -- form is a product of immanent, not transcendent reality.
Yet a Platonist might object: But nothing in this tells us what “form” is, as it is “in itself”; that is, in its principal nature. For matter to “form” – either itself or more complex bodies -- it needs a principle to follow; and matter – ubiquitous and uniform – does not itself generate such a principle. And neither do the laws of causation; for the causal laws generally are contingent on the presence of suitable arrangements or dispositions of matter for their application. Therefore, “form” cannot explain itself as a product of immanent reality; it must have a transcendent source.
The consistent failure of science to demonstrate abiogenesis – the theory that holds that inorganic matter can “boot-strap itself” into living matter – suggests the possibility that Plato was right about the need of a transcendent input for the creation of life. But I digress.
As Eric Voegelin points out (in Order and History, Vol 3: Plato and Aristotle), Aristotle, in his shift of attention from creation to creature, “paid the great price of eliminating the problem of transcendental form….
“Aristotle rejected the ideas as separate existences, but [he did not] repudiate the experiences in which the notion of a realm of ideas originated nor did he abandon the order of being that had become visible through the experiences of the philosophers since Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Xenophanes. The consequence is a curious transformation of the experience of transcendence which can perhaps be described as an intellectual thinning out. The fullness of experience which Plato expressed in the richness of his myth is in Aristotle reduced to the conception of God as the prime mover, as the noesis noeseos, the “thinking on thinking.” The Eros toward the Agathon [Plato’s main motivation] correspondingly is reduced to the agapesis, the delight in cognitive action for its own sake. Moreover, no longer is the soul as a whole immortal but only that part in it which Aristotle calls active intellect; the passive intellect, including memory, perishes. And finally, the mystical via negativa by which the soul ascends to the vision of the Idea in the Symposium is thinned out to the rise toward the dianoetic virtues and the bios theoretikos [i.e., the “life of the mind”].
Aristotle’s “reduction” or “derailment” effectively cancels out Plato’s great “leap in being,” which enabled him “to differentiate world-transcendent Being as the source of all being,” which recognition “correspondingly attaches to the ‘world’ the character of immanence.” Later on, Voegelin notes that Aristotle focused his attention “so thoroughly on a particular problem that the wider range of being is lost from sight.”
Sorry for this long ramble! But it’s the “set-up” of my answer to your question: “do the concepts of a ‘beyond’ and ‘transcendence’ suggest some sort of dualism or can we somehow speak of both?”
It seems to me dualism does not principally consist in the relation between the ‘beyond’ or ‘transcendence’ on the one hand (I think both terms refer to a single, albeit “non-existent” reality); and ‘immanence’ on the other (i.e., existent reality). It seems to me that dualism refers to an intrinsic property of the immanent or created world, and we see it everywhere. For instance, there is the particle-wave dualism of the constituents of physical matter, of the matter-spirit split of Cartesian dualism, of the space-time dualism of relativity theory, etc. Yet in each case, we must understand these “dualisms” to be the two different faces of a single unity which cannot simultaneously be seen “together” in their ultimate nature as a single unity from the standpoint of immanent, or space-time reality as we experience it. Yet to understand such things as “Lorenz-transformable items” already tells us we are viewing them from the standpoint of transcendence; or as we might say, under the aspect of Spirit. And that transcendence or Spirit is not a datum of ordinary immanent experience, but belongs to the “Beyond” of the universe. That is: to God, Who created the universe.
One might say dualism is the way the unity of the Beyond expresses in immanent space-time reality; but that under the aspect of transcendence the "faces" or "parts" of the dualism are inseparably one. If I might put it crudely, when spirit is incarnated in matter, dualisms start cropping up all over the place….
I very much like the observation of Hermes Trismagistus (who may or not have been a fictional being) on this subject. I’m paraphrasing from memory here:
Every living being is made up of a part that a man can see, and a part that a man cannot see.
This suggests to my mind the ultimate dualism expressing in living beings. Yet each “part” is necessary to express the total aliveness and oneness of existing things, which taken collectively point in turn to the Oneness of the living universe that can only be envisioned spiritually, from the aspect of a transcendent “Beyond” of the universe -- which is the Source that comprises, orders, and sustains it.
Finally the word “universe” itself speaks to this issue. It translates as “one turn,” which some have interpreted as meaning that everything that exists “turns to (or into) the One.” Which is to speak of that Unity which is constituted by the diversity of all existents.
This signifies to my mind that the "single living being" is to be grasped as the unity of the multiplicity of "all that exists." Transcendence (spirit) and immanence (the condition of all that exists) together comprise "the single, living organism."
Well, I don’t know how well I’ve articulated these views. It’s a most difficult subject, to be sure. In any case, this is where I’m “at” right now; and so my view is subject to change, contingent on future experience and new evidence. Certainly I’m not proposing any kind of "doctrine" here. I just want to follow in the footsteps of the masters: Neither Plato nor Aristotle left us with “doctrines”: They were not system builders. They were both much more interested in propounding the seminal questions, and were quite content to leave the answers to posterity. And sure enough, posterity is still arguing about these very questions!
Both Plato and Aristotle believed that one must follow the evidence, wherever it leads, without regard to any pre-existing notions; that truth is never the final possession of any man, but a quest. And Plato believed (I’m not completely sure about Aristotle on this) that the terminus of the quest for Truth can only be found in the Beyond which transcends the immanent world; for the Beyond is its Source.
Indeed, cornelis -- this post has been a very rich banquet! I’m so grateful to everyone who is participating in this wide-ranging discussion. I hope I’ll have the time to digest it all sooner rather than later. It’s been an education so far. Thank you so much for writing cornelis!
True.
Einstein said something similar:
I believe, indeed, that overemphasis on the purely intellectual attitude, often directed sorely to the practical and factual, in our education, has led directly to the impairment of ethical values. I am not thinking so much of the dangers with which technical progress has directly confronted mankind, as of the stifling of mutual human considerations by a "matter of fact" habit of thought which has come to lie like a killing frost upon human relations.
Fulfillment on the moral and esthetic side is a goal which lies closer to the preoccupations of art than it does to those of science. Of course, understanding of our fellow-beings is important. But this understanding becomes fruitful only when it sustained by sympathetic feelings of joy and in sorrow. The cultivation of this most important spring of moral action is that which is left of religion when it has been purified of the elements of superstition. In this sense, religion forms an important part of education, where it receives far too little consideration, and that little not sufficiently systematic.
The frightful dilemma of the political world situation has much to do with this sin of omission on the part of our civilization. Without "ethical culture" there is no salvation for humanity.--Albert Einstein, Published in Mein Weltbild, Zurich: Europa Verlag 1953
This remains to be seen, StJacques. I eagerly await future developments.
You write: "The real argument for a transcendent reality interacting with nature is in the creation of the universe."
Does this mean that you think/believe God only acted once -- in the Beginning -- and then withdrew?
As to the question how the universe was created before there was a universe: This seems to be a senseless question, for there was no "before" "before" time "started." And time (and space and matter) are all thought to have "begun" with the Big Bang, or at least by one Planck-time unit thereafter. (We don't know what happened before then -- i.e., between T0 and T1 (where T is Time, T0 the Big Bang, and T1 the completion of the first unit of Plank time.) And the physical laws are no help here.
Once again, our "immanent position" in the universe prohibits our seeing such things. We humans tend to see only those things that are "in time."; Yet it is only from a transcendent perspective that the timeless things -- such as the creation event -- can be grasped.
Wolfhart Pannenberg, professor of systematic theology at the University of Munich, sheds some light on such questions (in Toward a Theology of Nature):
“Through the modern insight that time and matter belong together, the old problem, already discussed profoundly by Augustine, has become more transparent: the problem of how the temporal beginning of the world is related to time itself. Because of the connection of time and matter, the conclusion becomes invalid that the beginning of the world in time would have been preceded already by a time. Then it becomes meaningless to speak of a world before the origin of the world. However, this means that the act of creation itself also must not be conceived as a temporal act. This suggests to theology a new formulation of the idea of creation: the divine act of creation does not occur in time – rather, it constitutes an eternal act, contemporaneous with all time; that is, with the entire world process. Yet this process itself has a temporal beginning, because it takes place in time.
“In this sentence I assert that eternity is contemporaneous with all time. With that, the concept of eternity itself is described by statements of time. With a musical parable one might speak of eternity as the sounding together of all time in a sole present. Elsewhere I have developed this concept of eternity from the human experience of time, from the relativity of the distinction of past, present, and future corresponding to the relativity of the directions in space. In view of the relativity of the modes of time to the aspect of the human being experiencing time, this resulted in the assumption that all time, if it could be, so to speak, surveyed from a ‘place’ outside the course of time, would have to appear as contemporaneous.”
To borrow Alamo-Girl’s perceptive description here, in other words, from this perspective, the 4D block would appear, not as a progression of discrete events moving from past, present, to future, but as a “plane” or “brane” in which all events are contemporaneous. Pannenberg continues:
“This assumption is confirmed by a unique phenomenonon of the human experience of time through the experience of an ‘expanded present’ in which not only the punctiliar now but everything on which a position may be taken still or already is considered as present…. Understood in the sense of the suggestions above, the concept of eternity comprehends all time and everything temporal in itself _ a conception of the relationship of time and eternity that goes back to Augustine and is connected to the Israelite understanding of eternity as unlimited duration throughout time.
“The worldview of the theory of relativity also can be understood in the sense of a last contemporaneousness of all events that for us are partitioned into temporal sequence.”
Of course, as Pannenberg himself notes, the perspective from which one could view such things “would not coincide with any position in the world process.”
In Pannenberg’s model, “creation can be conceived, on the ground of the theory of relativity, as an eternal act that comprises the total process of finite reality, while that which is created, whose existence happens in time, originates and passes away temporally.”
Thus, the way I figure it, eternity is not itself “duration;” rather it is the “matrix” in which ‘durations’ — temporal events (seemingly exhibiting the idea of, not only ‘duration,’ but also of ‘passing away’) — take place. Including scientific measurements and observations which are often based on “abstractions” such as Planck time – the teensiest piece of “punctiliar time” that the human mind can measure or grasp.)
Thus, eternity is the “Eternal Now” – which is not a datum of human sensory experience, for sure; rather it is a concept to which the human mind (and heart) can aspire and understand.
StJacques said in 253:
"The real argument for a transcendent reality interacting with nature is in the creation of the universe."
That was in response to BB's statement in 252:
"The consistent failure of science to demonstrate abiogenesis – the theory that holds that inorganic matter can “boot-strap itself” into living matter – suggests the possibility that Plato was right about the need of a transcendent input for the creation of life."
I think StJacques has the better point. That is, he is taking the mystery (or in his phrase: the "argument for a transcendent reality") back to the ultimate origin, where the philosopher's Prime Mover has always lurked. Any subsequent "mystery" is subordinate to it, and thus far less significant, and constitutes a question that science may one day resolve. Scientifically explained phenomena are destined to take their places in the Retirement Home for Obsolete Miracles, that dismal residence where such fading idols as disease, lightning, the day-night cycle, and other natural aspects of the world now reside in their dotage, reminiscing about the glory days when they were regarded as evidence of gods.
You may take that last as a frivolous, or even irreligious remark, but that's not my intent. I've often pointed out that I think it's a terrible error to pin one's religious convictions on any one scientific issue, because when the issue is resolved, the results are psychologically catastrophic. Unnecessarily so. Want to see this unfolding in the real world? Visit one of the evolution threads and dispassionately observe the conduct of those whose erroneous worldview is needlessly collapsing around them. It's not a pretty sight.
It's unseemly for transcendence to operate like a poorly-led, untrained militia. "We'll fight it out here, but if it doesn't go right then we'll drop back a bit, and if necessary we'll retreat again to that line of trees over there, but if they get that far then we'll gather what we can salvage and redeploy over yonder ..." That's no way to run things. Take the highest ground there is and you're in the best possible position.
What can I say - great minds think alike, obviously ;)
It's too easy to interpret such "success" with inordinate application. For there's a fallacy lurking somewhere that invites a strange equation between the possible and the actual--God forbid that anyone might pin one's religious convictions on a scientific demonstration.
Abiogenesis, if there is anything unique about it, means that some part of the action has no anterior material cause. Such a thing is less demonstrated than observed.
Of course PH is on the money to raise problem of miracles. It suggests once again that particular character of a science that operates from a standpoint insisting that consistency over time is the one and only prerequisite for intelligence. A smaller world than I am aware of. When history and politics will disappear under the success of science it will be a grand eclipse by the a priori.
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