this is a post that was on my boards by Magriette and my answer to it. In his post you will see the argues most of my position which he didn't know was mine because he didn't read my arguments. then I quote form Tillich in the Dialogue book to show that that's the deal, that he's just taking position I laid out in the essay you all refuse to read.
Magritte wrote:Now that I'm back from my spiced rum bender - kids, never go on a spiced rum bender - let me re-address the matter at hand.
Metacrock, I'm not saying that Tillich is some kind of atheist, that he's down on anything that you personally happen to label supernatural. However, he's very clear that for him supernatural is a derogatory term, even though he speaks positively of things that you might happen to categorize under that label. Supernatural is his term for what you call the counterfeit stuff, things he speaks of in the same breath as superstition.
ME:
that may be true, or it may be that you are just too narrow a data base for his work (which is four quotes). I'm still stuck on the phrase "sounds like supernatural but it's not." why would he say that if he though supernatural is bad? why would he bother to distinguish between what sounds like it and what's really it? The thing he said that about is the "breaking in" which is exactly what Spacemonkey and the other morons, the more trollish of his lackies, are using to characterize the supernatural as a whole? Why not just say "O that's the stupid old supernaturalfor you!??"
Mag: Now look at what he says about "breaking in"
what I just said is what he says about breaking in--sounds like SN but it's not.
Mag - Paul's experience of God. It's Paul's subjective experience that's important, not whether or not anything happened that third parties would have noticed - a beam from heaven, or whatever. And it's this subjectivity, this non-falsifiability, that I find intriguing. He's saying that God breaking into the world and communicating with man can be consistent with and harmonious with an atheist's understanding of the world.
ME:
like the third way Schliermacher principle where I quote him saying "both sides are wrong the real way is Schleiermacher's harmony? but of course that require that you read my essay to actually see that. that's exactly what I've pointed out time and time again. That's the exact position I laid and defended in my essay, the one you didn't read.
Mag: There are no ostentatious cherubs floating around on clouds parting a veil that allows God's emanation to beam down to Paul. It's not like some cheesy renaissance painting - there's actually nothing going on here that a Dawkins or a Harris would object to - just a man experiencing something that's mysterious and ambiguous, the interpretation of which is highly dependent on one's worldview.
Me:
If he's saying that breaking in could be harmonious with the world, then what would he speak about all that harmony stuff in connection with Schlemeracher's principle all the enlistment harmony jazz I speak of at the end of my essay?
The one you and spacemonkey and the Howard brothers didn't read!!!
Remember the quote I have refereed to many times where he says "both sides are wrong, both sides are wrong both Orthodoxy (supernturalism) and enlightenment (naturailsm) the true principle is Schliermacher's harmony.
mag Are we all on the same page here?
Meta
I was on it before you were. but you couldn't know that becuase you didn't read my arguments. The reason it's possible to have this discussion now is becuase you, unlike the geniuses on carm, are actually willing to discuss issues rather than personalities.
here is a statement form the Dialogue book where he really says basically what Met said above. (Met is another poster on my board) It also backs something I said sever times that Moneky man and his pals poo pooed:
Tillich Of course, many problems do arise. There is first of all the problem of what really does happen objectively, and then the problem of what happens in the human being who experiences such astonishment. The first thing I want to state here is that only in a correlative relationship between the subjective and the objective sides of the experience can we speak of a miracle. This is the reason why Jesus declined when the Pharisees and the scribes asked him to perform a "show" miracle — the kind of magic trick we might watch at country fairs. They asked him to do this, and he refused. This expresses the fact that miracles, in the sense in which he was involved in them, are events which have a particular significance to the person who experiences them. That is the one fundamental statement. Miracles are subjective-objective, subject-object-oriented, always in correlation, and never comprehensible in any other way. Not merely subjective, they are not merely objective, either.
that basically opens the door to the whole God working through nature not breaking in on it.
he talks about miracles as signs, they meaning something to the people involved he says:
Tillich Therefore miracles happened in the presence of Jesus, and they did not happen in the presence of the apostles except when they were themselves full of the divine Spirit. This formulation should open up our understanding of miracles as a whole, not only those in the New Testament stories, but also the many miraculous events in the whole history of the church, and the very similar miracle stories in other religions. If there is a situation which points beyond itself, it is possible for astonishing events to be experienced and religiously justified.
Meta
part 3
Meta
then here he has this long exchange with this professor (unnamed) who wants clarification on this strange unscientific thing Tillich is proposing, naturalistic miracles, so to speak. no one uses that term in the Dialogue but that's sort of what he's saying. The contrasts his view withe conventional concept of miracles. Tillich says:
(1) you can't have a breaking in because it would violate the structure of C/e and naturalistic world..
(2) then he also intimates our understanding of the structure is limited and there realities that are greater than that and the structure is beyond what we pin it down to.
Tillich:So if there are, in the whole of the universe, causalities — relationships of realities — then there are two possibilities. First we have the Greek world view, in which miracles were very easy. They occurred continually, because the gods were members of the cosmos, beings with power. And with their power they were interrelated with the whole of reality. When they appeared, they could direct a hero’s arrow and cause it to reach its aim or not. Then they were also empirical causalities, beings like ourselves, but with slightly more power. This comes out clearly in the tragedies, which speak against the gods. Prometheus stands already as a representative of man in opposition to these gods.
that is the version he's against, then he compares to his:
Tillich: The second possibility is that of the absolutely transcendent, and then the situation is quite different. Then the whole can produce, within its own structure, things which are astonishing. But this "divine" power is not a particular causality which interferes with the law of the whole. That would be my answer.
Professor: It is not necessary to assume that this other realm of causality is outside of the universe, but merely that it is beyond human understanding at a particular historical period.
Dr. Tillich: Oh, if it is a part of the universe, and cannot be understood by us today, it is very easy to accept. There are innumerable things which we do not understand, and the deeper physics goes into nature the more it understands the limits of its understanding. So if you take it as a finite reality, I am open to any wonderful thing.
Professor: Is it possible to suppose that Jesus and the saints had access to a larger realm of causality than other human beings in the same way that an atomic scientist has a greater access than we do?
Dr. Tillich: Now here I would say, unfortunately or fortunately, that Jesus was not an atomic scientist. He was a full human being, and if at that time he had had the knowledge of an atomic scientist or a modern physician, I would take the position that his humanity would have been denied. In matters of empirical knowledge he was as limited as anyone in his time. He had, as people often can have, a deeper existential insight into the psychology of human beings; this comes out very clearly, but it is not miraculous. It belongs to the person-to-person relationship. And I would agree with you on this, that his insight into the human psychology of other people was much more than ordinarily profound. But it was not mythologically divine. Now if we introduce divine knowledge into the empirical realm of his knowledge, the Council of Chalcedon is wrong. And because of his full humanity, strongly emphasized by the Christian church, he could not have had supernatural knowledge about empirical realities
even though he never says "I have my own third way of understanding supernatural" clearly he does. It's a postilion I have also elaborating myself in dealing with the issue fo brain chemistry in religious experience. He's pretty shaking on physical law but I agree with him that our understand of that area is shaky too.
He does say (395 History of Ch thought) Schlamermacher is the way (Orthodoxy and enlightenment are both wrong) he is in the that way Schleiermacher which is the harmony of divine in nature.
that is the very potion that I elaborate and no way to read my essay that I put up the other day and see that. Had you rad it then you would know that.
he's not nixing the idea that things happened he's only nixing the idea that they constitute a "breaking in." They are happening by the cooperation of nature in bending to the guidance of faith, not that they are just flat out BS did not happen. About the Catholic saint making miracles and the Catholic process of documenting them he says:
Tillich The Catholic church requires very lengthy procedures in judging the candidacy of any particular personality for sainthood. A "devil’s advocate" tries his best to prove the unworthiness of the candidate. One of the main issues is the proving of miracles. Now this I have always understood very well. I have always defended the Catholic church on this issue, although the average Protestant feels much estranged by the idea. But he is estranged because he does not know what "saint" means. He thinks a saint is somebody who doesn’t smoke, dance, or drink. That is one of the lowest levels of moralism and has nothing to do with the real concept of a saint. The real meaning of sainthood is radiation, transparency to the holy — or translucency to the holy, if you prefer that word. "Radiation" is perhaps the best, since a saint radiates the presence of the divine in a special way. And in this situation miracles can happen, which means that an astonishing event can point beyond itself.
Meta:
IF he was saying that nothing like miracles ever happens and the divine has no real effect in the world why would he not just say the whole effort is bs becuase nothing like that happens?
Here's the proof where he says that miracles are the harmony of divine and natural working together they are not buck or BS or the never happen.
Tillch By this I mean that they are thought of as supranatural in the sense of the breaking in of a causal power from another realm. But miracles operate in terms of ordinary causality. To think of them as involving an objective breaking of the structure of reality, or suspending the laws of nature, is superstition. If the stories are told in this way, we have of course to inquire historically as to the real basis for them: What is the astonishing thing that actually happened? Usually we cannot pursue such inquiries very far. We would also have to ask: Under what conditions did this rationalization occur? How was the miraculous character of the miracle distorted and made to depend, not on its power of pointing to the presence of the divine, but on a recounting in such a way that the structure of reality or natural law is broken?
Meta;
I've made this same point myself many times in dealing with the issue mystical experience and brain chemistry.
here he starts sounding like Bultmann becasue that's part of his tradition. That's understanable that he would be in the tradition of Bultmann but I am not. I don't have to accept Bultmann's assumptions.
Tillich Natural law is, in the view of modern philosophy, not what it was to Kant. It is a problematic term today. But let us agree that reality has a structure. The superstitious development of miracle traditions, which is very rationalistic — not irrational, but rationalistic — desires to emphasize the contradiction of the structure of reality. I have already spoken about the pseudo Gospels or rejected Gospels as we may call them, in which stories about Jesus were told that made him as a boy, for example, construct pigeons out of clay and then give them the power to fly in the air. Now this is what I call rationalism which becomes superstition. The combination of two things, rationalism and superstition, that seem to contradict each other makes most of the miracle stories, not only in the New Testament but everywhere, so difficult for us to understand. This is why I believe that a thorough purge of our usual understanding of these things is necessary. I would call these stories a fantastic combination of antirational rationalisms.
part 3
Meta
then here he has this long exchange with this professor (unnamed) who wants clarification on this strange unscientific thing Tillich is proposing, naturalistic miracles, so to speak. no one uses that term in the Dialogue but that's sort of what he's saying. The contrasts his view withe conventional concept of miracles. Tillich says:
(1) you can't have a breaking in because it would violate the structure of C/e and naturalistic world..
(2) then he also intimates our understanding of the structure is limited and there realities that are greater than that and the structure is beyond what we pin it down to.
Tillich:So if there are, in the whole of the universe, causalities — relationships of realities — then there are two possibilities. First we have the Greek world view, in which miracles were very easy. They occurred continually, because the gods were members of the cosmos, beings with power. And with their power they were interrelated with the whole of reality. When they appeared, they could direct a hero’s arrow and cause it to reach its aim or not. Then they were also empirical causalities, beings like ourselves, but with slightly more power. This comes out clearly in the tragedies, which speak against the gods. Prometheus stands already as a representative of man in opposition to these gods.
that is the version he's against, then he compares to his:
Tillich: The second possibility is that of the absolutely transcendent, and then the situation is quite different. Then the whole can produce, within its own structure, things which are astonishing. But this "divine" power is not a particular causality which interferes with the law of the whole. That would be my answer.
Professor: It is not necessary to assume that this other realm of causality is outside of the universe, but merely that it is beyond human understanding at a particular historical period.
Dr. Tillich: Oh, if it is a part of the universe, and cannot be understood by us today, it is very easy to accept. There are innumerable things which we do not understand, and the deeper physics goes into nature the more it understands the limits of its understanding. So if you take it as a finite reality, I am open to any wonderful thing.
Professor: Is it possible to suppose that Jesus and the saints had access to a larger realm of causality than other human beings in the same way that an atomic scientist has a greater access than we do?
Dr. Tillich: Now here I would say, unfortunately or fortunately, that Jesus was not an atomic scientist. He was a full human being, and if at that time he had had the knowledge of an atomic scientist or a modern physician, I would take the position that his humanity would have been denied. In matters of empirical knowledge he was as limited as anyone in his time. He had, as people often can have, a deeper existential insight into the psychology of human beings; this comes out very clearly, but it is not miraculous. It belongs to the person-to-person relationship. And I would agree with you on this, that his insight into the human psychology of other people was much more than ordinarily profound. But it was not mythologically divine. Now if we introduce divine knowledge into the empirical realm of his knowledge, the Council of Chalcedon is wrong. And because of his full humanity, strongly emphasized by the Christian church, he could not have had supernatural knowledge about empirical realities
even though he never says "I have my own third way of understanding supernatural" clearly he does. It's a postilion I have also elaborating myself in dealing with the issue fo brain chemistry in religious experience. He's pretty shaking on physical law but I agree with him that our understand of that area is shaky too.
He does say (395 History of Ch thought) Schlamermacher is the way (Orthodoxy and enlightenment are both wrong) he is in the that way Schleiermacher which is the harmony of divine in nature.
that is the very potion that I elaborate and no way to read my essay that I put up the other day and see that. Had you rad it then you would know that.
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