Posted on 01/06/2015 5:13:00 AM PST by metmom
In your opinion.
To illustrate, check out what Jesus told Phillip in John's Gospel, Chapter fourteen, regarding the inability of the disciple to be 'shown the father God'. That was, for all practical purposes a Physics lesson, explaining that dimensionally God is so much greater than His created Universe that the complete vision of The Father is an impossibility for Phillip. What Jesus offers to Phillip is the most Phillip can 'know' of God, of God's nature.
Since you brought up the issue of physics. To the best of my knowledge the majority of Christians believe that God is an infinite being/ person. They also believe that God is three separate persons; God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit. This means that you would have three separate infinities. That is an awful lot of infinities!
Nor was I trying to imply that you personally had. I was just trying to make a general point that a person like Richard Dawkins might approve of. (I don't know whether you are a fan of his....)
Why is it that the most strident denigrators of Christianity seem to be among the most ignorant with respect to knowledge of the subject matter they attack?
You noted that "on other threads I lurk on the Catholics are called pagan." Yes indeed. It is distressing. But then, a Roman Catholic might retort: "The Reformed Church has too much fallen under the influence of post-Enlightenment modes of thought."
By "pagan," the Reformed Church declares its animosity to "Greek thought" — that is, to classical philosophy of the Platonic–Aristotelian type. But then I find that many first-rate theologians of the Reformed Church hold St. Augustine in the highest honor and respect. Who was a full-blown Platonist. [Arguably, the theology of St. Paul was nourished from this source as well.] But the great saint and doctor of the Church Aquinas — who helped convey the great legacy of Aristotle to the West — and Anselm (who can be said as entirely operating on Platonic noetic and ontological grounds) can be roundly despised as venturing into territory outside of "sola scriptura," and thus must be distrusted and reviled for that very reason.
Go Figure. Call it a "family quarrel" and get over it. Since you are presumably a member of a family, you are likely already perfectly well aware of how painful family quarrels can be....
Personally, I like the way St. Justin Martyr handled this problem. He was a Christian philosopher of the second century A.D., a relentless seeker of Truth — an exemplar of fides quaerens intellectum, of faith seeking understanding, faith seeking its reason. He had been to study with the Stoics; he'd gone to the Lyceum (Aristotle's school); I gather he even hanged out with the Epicureans for a time. Nothing satisfied. Until he found Plato.
The upshot of this encounter: Justin found and declared that the Incarnation of Christ was not only the complete fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, but it was also a complete fulfillment of classical philosophy.
The details of this immense insight are beyond the scope of the present writing. Though I'd love to explore them further with anybody who cares about the eternal fides quaerens intellectum....
Oh, before I sign off for now, just a quick note on the difference between Zeus and company and the divine Trinity. Zeus and his family were all intracosmic gods. That is to say, they were all "creatures" of a "creator," just like man; but unlike man, they were immortal.
The divine Trinity, on the other hand, is wholly uncreated, sui-generis, self-subsistent, undivided pure Being, that is on the one hand wholly transcendent — meaning, utterly Beyond the Cosmos (Plato's key insight) — yet at the same time wholly immanent in the lawful working out of the worlds of nature and human existence. The sheer, absolute "Beyondness" of Plato's god renders him totally unintelligible, indescribable, in human understanding and language.
But Justin Martyr's key, liberating insight was that, with the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, Plato's god of the Beyond is brought into the realm of immanence, thus of human understanding. He is the bridge between the heavenly (infinite) and earthly (finite) realms, in both of which human souls necessarily participate, "from Alpha to Omega."
I'll hold off on a discussion of modern scientific cosmologies, almost all of which nowadays are trying to obviate the necessity of an Origin of the universe. But only because I've run on so long already. (I'm deeply interested in this topic. Maybe we can revisit it later.)
Anyhoot, in closing, as far as your "spiritual development" is concerned, taking advice from Justice Potter Stewart "as to the proof I will accept" does not strike me as out of line. Regarding his requirement of an acceptable criterion of judgment, he said "I will know it when I see it."
Skepticism is a good attitude to have these days, given that so many faux-religions have sprung up in recent times. Including "scientistic" ones.
If you seek truth, then I'd say you're on the right path. If you have an open mind, and above all, an open heart, Truth — that is to say, God — will find you.
And when He does, may you know the fullness of His Grace and Light.
All you have to do is say (in your heart): God help me.
Just some thoughts FWTW. Be well, my friend. And thank you so much for writing.
Since you brought up the issue of physics. To the best of my knowledge the majority of Christians believe that God is an infinite being/ person. They also believe that God is three separate persons; God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit. This means that you would have three separate infinities. That is an awful lot of infinities!
Define infinite?...
First, the very term 'infinity' has many different uses. As Christians use the term it means 'not finite'. The God we worship as Creator brought time into existence at the big bang. As such the use of infinite to describe God, if used in a temporal sense, is a major inaccuracy. God as Jesus is in a temporal relationship to the created Universe. God The Father Almighty is greater than His creation.
Second, you inserted the word 'separate' when defining the way Christians name the Trinity. That is actually an inaccuracy, also. God manifests as three different individualities, but these are each and at the same time God, thus they cannot be separate or there would be three gods, and God tells us He is one, not three separate.
Jesus explained this connection (unification, not separateness) to Phillip in terms He believed would end the harangue going on between the disciples over whether Jesus was Messiah, The Son of God, thus God with them.
Last, you again expose the agenda of your most recent little foray at FR by using the term 'infinities' in a temporal sense. As shown to you above, that sense of temporal is incorrect, and in your case, deliberately used that way.
So, again, in what context would the proof you seek have to be framed?
Neglected to ping you ... ping-a-ling-a-ling
Set him on dry land for a few minutes...
Good question!
One that I have is: Just who thought up...
... the story of Zeus, Apollo and his twin sister Artemis.
You mean like...
...Catholics?
Ok, Tom.
John 20:29
Jesus said unto him, “Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”
Don't worry. We have room.
Do you want the really BIG definition, or the really SMALL one?
I so agree, dear brother in Christ!
Which is why I think maybe Christians should stop using the term "infinity" with respect to the Being of God.
"Infinity" is, after all, a term from the lexicon of mathematics. It denotes a condition of limitlessness in time, of something without spatiotemporal limit. Which, WRT God, is certainly a reasonable, apperceptive observation.
But it also is an attempt to "reduce God" to human metrics. Which, as I earlier suggested, is an exercise in futility. For such a reduction forgets that God is the Creator of time, and so cannot just be lumped in with the rest of the created furniture of the universe so to be subjected to the imposition of time upon himself.
Maybe, rather than "infinite," we Christians should use the words "eternal," or "timeless." That sort of thing might get rid of certain epistemological difficulties.
Thank you so much for writing, MHGinTN! It's good to hear from you again.
A good epistemological point betty. I’ve always used “eternal” rather than any of the other possible words.
Now you’ve, just a little better, helped me understand why. Thanks.
Anselm's analysis is particularly helpful to those willing to reason it through. Thank you for bringing it to the table.
And thank you for your support, truly I never said nor believe that God entirely "reduces" to the Bible. Jeepers.
You and I have been in many discussions of this type over the years and our book Timothy addressees many of the issues directly in a dialogue with a composite of our correspondents.
As with the frog, one must look to see.
LOLOL! Excellent, dear marron!
In the absence of time, events cannot occur.
Indeed, the only cosmology which is “closed” is Max Tegmark’s Level IV Parallel Universe. And it is closed precisely because it is radical Platonism, it is not physical. In effect, it posits that everything observed “in” space/time is actually a manifestation of mathematical structures which really exist outside of space and time.
Mathematically, the dimension of a space is the minimum number of coordinates (axes) necessary to identify a point within the space. A space of zero dimensions is a point; one dimension, a line, two dimensions, a plane; three, a cube, etc. That is the geometry of it. In zero dimensions, the mathematical point is indivisible.
It is not nothing. It is a spatial point. A singularity is not nothing.
In ex nihilo Creation (beginning of space/time) - the dimensions are not merely zero, they are null, dimensions do not exist at all. There is no space and no time. Period.
There is no mathematical point, no volume, no content, no scalar quantities. Ex nihilo doesn’t exist in relationship to anything else; there is no thing.
In an existing physical space, each point (e.g. particle) can be parameterized by a quantity such as mass. The parameter (e.g. a specific quantity within the range of possible quantities) is in effect another descriptor or quasi-dimension that uniquely identifies the point within the space.
Moreover, if the quantity of the parameter changes for a point, then a time dimension is invoked. For example, at one moment the point value is “0” and the next it is “1”.
Wave propagation (e.g. big bang, inflation) cannot occur in null dimensions nor can it occur in zero spatial dimensions, a mathematical point; a dimension of time is required for any fluctuation in a parameter value at a point.
Moreover, wave propagation must also have a spatial/temporal relation from cause point to effect point, i.e. physical causation.
For instance “0” at point nt causes “1” at point n+1t+1 which causes "0" at point n+1t+2 etc..
Obviously, physical wave propagation (e.g. big bang/inflationary model) cannot precede space/time and physical causality. Again,
In the absence of time, events cannot occur.
God's Name is I AM
It is a great and delightful wonderment to me, dearest sister in Christ, to find that Plato's insights of roughly two-and-a-half millennia ago as to the fundamental order of the Cosmos, the Universe, really of Being, has been so wonderfully explicated by a mathematical physicist of our own time. That is, Max Tegmark's Level IV cosmology, explicated in "Parallel Universes" (Scientific American, 2004.)
Also, I am highly intrigued by P.S. Wesson's , which proposes that spacetime is to be defined as (at least) three of space, and two (at least) of time.
Recently, I have read David Bohm's extraordinary Wholeness and the Implicate Order (2002). The interesting thing here is that Bohm's thinking seems to draw on the great pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus at least as much as Plato's thought did.
Is "classical philosophy" enjoying some kind of a "come-back" of intellectual respectability here, in so-called post-modern times?"
I certainly hope so!!! It seems to me the classical philosophers were awesomely good at tracking intellectual problems right down to the ground....
Yet evidently, there are people out there who want to "kill" God and human history because of the inconveniences such "old" frameworks pose to their own "enlightened" projects. But it seems such folk never see that they saw off the same branch on which they logically sit by doing this....
'Nuff said. Thank you so much dearest sister for your wonderfully illuminating essay-post!!!
I certainly hope so!!! It seems to me the classical philosophers were awesomely good at tracking intellectual problems right down to the ground....
For one thing, Biology cannot continue to ignore first and final cause.
Thank you oh so very much for ALL of your wonderful insights, dearest sister in Christ! And thank you for your encouragements!
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