Pages

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

The Super Essential-Godhead (God is 'Being Itself")

Photobucket

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (around 500AD)







Most people tend to think of God s a big man on a throne. They judge God by human standards. Like Dawkins argument that God would be more complex than his universe and thus less likely to exit. This is based entirely upon the idea that God is a magnified version of humanity. When I point this out atheists  scoff and insist that most people see God this way we Christian apologists have to as well. When I point out that Paul Tillich had this totally different view of God as being itself they insist that this is not a Christian concept.

Paul Tillich the great theologian of the 20th century, was most noted for his seemly radical idea that God is "Being itself" or the ground of being, just what that means is very hard to put into words. Essentially it means that God is not a being but the basis of what  being is, being itself. There are no good analogies but the best I've come up with is like the difference between architecture and a single house. It is not a house but the basis upon which houses are built. This is important as a distinction because atheists are always trying to judge God by human standards to treat God as though he just magnified humanity. All of the criticisms they make of religious belief revolve around the notion of God as a big man. The true Christian concept of God is more than that; and this the  "true Christian concept" because it is the view of the Orthodox church from a time before the split with the West. Most commentators on Tillich wont say this but I think I have an original observation that Tillich was trying to translate Dionysus the Areopagite into existentialism. That is to say ancinet neo-Platonism into modern existentialism. Notice the similarity in the ideas: compare this with last post.

Dionysus The Areopagite (500)


The Author claims to be Paul’s companion in Acts, but due to the almost complete infusion of neo-Platonism throughout the text, the writings have been placed near the end of the fourth or early part of the fifth century. This is largely due to the influence of pagan philosophers Proclus (lecturing in Athens around 430 AD). The true name of the author is unknown he was probably a monk, believed to have lived in Syria. His writings have been extremely influential; he in essence kicked of the whole tradition of Christian mysticism. He founds the basic foundation for Gregory and Eastern Orthodox figures quoted above. The ideas of “Pseudo Dionysus” as he is most often known in the west, are set down in a long introduction by the translator Clearance Edwin Rolt. Rolt died at thirty-seven and this was his only book, but he had been hailed as one of the finest scholars ever produced by Queens College. Thus I think it only fair that we quote from the man himself. The major concept in which turns all Dionysus has to say is daubed by Rolt as the Super Essential Godhead:

The basis of their teaching is the doctrine of the Super-Essential Godhead (ὑπερούσιος θεαρχία). We must, therefore, at the very outset fix the meaning of this term. Now the word “Essence” or “Being” (οὐσία) means almost invariably an individual existence; more especially a person, since such is the highest type that individual existence can in this world assume. And, in fact, like the English word “Being,” it may without qualification be used to mean an angel. Since, then, the highest connotation of the term “Essence” or “Being” is a person, it follows that by “Super-Essence” is intended “Supra-Personality.” And hence the doctrine of the Super-Essential Godhead simply means that God is, in His ultimate Nature, Supra-Personal.
Now an individual person is one who distinguishes himself from the rest of the world. I am a person because I can say: “I am I and I am not you.” Personality thus consists in the faculty of knowing oneself to be one individual among others. And thus, by its very nature, Personality is (on one side of its being, at least) a finite thing. The very essence of my personal state lies in the fact that I am not the whole universe but a member thereof.
God, on the other hand, is Supra-Personal because He is infinite. He is not one Being among others, but in His ultimate nature dwells on a plane where there is nothing whatever beside Himself. The only kind of consciousness we may attribute to Him is what can but be described as an Universal Consciousness. He does not distinguish Himself from us; for were we caught up on to that level we should be wholly transformed into Him. And yet we distinguish between ourselves and Him because from our lower plane of finite Being we look up and see that ultimate level beyond us. The Super-Essential Godhead is, in fact, precisely that which modern philosophy describes as the Absolute. Behind the diversities of this world there must be an Ultimate Unity. And this Ultimate Unity must contain in an undifferentiated condition all the riches of consciousness, life, and existence which are dispersed in broken fragments throughout the world. Yet It is not a particular Consciousness or a particular Existence. It is certainly not Unconscious, Dead or, in the ordinary sense, non-Existent, for all these terms imply something below instead of above the states to which they are opposed.[1]

We can see in that description several features which correspond to the things Tillich says. One interesting discussion that I close before it is started is the “personal” aspects. I am saving that discussion for its own chapter on Being itself and consciousness. The first point of interest is the connection between being and essence. He defines ousia as either one. Ousia of course is the root words of homoousios. Rolt confirms Tillich’s view in saying that essence refers to a particular existence, but the Super Essential is in contrast to an individual person. God is beyond the consciousness of an individual, but is in fact a universal consciousness that is in all things and can identify with all beings. I’ve already dealt with Tillich’s nix on pantheism; this is not a pantheistic idea. Yet in defining it Rolt deals with many of the aspects of God as being iself expressed by Tillich. God is infinite, God is not one person among others, transcendent of all we know and dwells on a plane beyond our understanding. The term “Super Essential” can be understood as “ground of being” or “Being itself.” They are basically saying the same thing. The Greek phrase he uses for “Super-Essential Godhead” is ‘humperusios Thearkia: Super means “over” or “transcendent” a structure over something else, such as “superstructure.” Thearkia is commonly the term in the NT for “Godhead.” What is being communicated is the notion of transcendence but also the transcendental signifier, the overview to the ordering of meaning and order, that is equivalent to the concept of a ground, of course as pointed out, essential has an affinity with being. Thus we could as well translate it “ground of being.” The concept of God as “Ground of Being” is the concept of “Super Essential” God. I don’t suggest that “ground” would be a good translation as translations go, but I do think it’s hinting at the same idea.[2]

Pseudo Dionysius himself begins by embracing the vita negative, God is beyond our understanding, we don’t try to say what God is, we experience what God is (mystical union) we say what God is not and infer from that the truth, except where we are given clear understanding in Scripture. “We must not then dare to speak, or indeed to form any conception of the hidden Super-Essential Godhead, except those things that are revealed to us from the Holy Scriptures. For a Super-Essential understanding of it is proper to unknowning which lieth at the Super-Essence thereof surpassing discourse, intuition, and Being.” The translator capitalizes being.

The one who is beyond thought surpasses the apprehension of thought; the good which is beyond utterance surpasses the reach of words. Yea, it is a unity which is the unifying source of all unity and a Super-Essential Essence, a Mind beyond the reach of mind and Word beyond utterance, Eluding Discourse, intuition, Name and every kind of being. It is the universal cause of existence while itself existing not for it is beyond all being and such that it alone could give, with proper understanding thereof, a revelation of itself.(52)[3]

Notice that this appears to be where Tillich obtains his usage of the term “existence,” and the distinction that God does not exist. What is puzzling is that while Tillich says God is beyond existence, because existence is for contingent things, and God is Being itself, identifies God with Being, Dionysus says God is beyond being. But then he is a full blown neo-Platonist. For him being is just reality and that is a copy of the true nature of things in which it participates. Tillich seems to move one step over from neo-Platonism toward modern existentialism. Dionysus tells us that we must make no expression or positive statement about the Super-Essential Godhead except those revealed in scripture for these are actually revealed by God. He tells us that “many writers thou wilt find who have declared that it [Super-Essential Godhead] is not only invisible and incomprehensible but also unreachable and past finding out since there is no trace of any that have penetrated the depth of its infinitude.” God reveals “itself” in stages commensurate with the powers of the subject for understanding. The notion that God is so wholly other, so transcendent of understanding is right in line with Tillich’s view. It’s clear Dionysius is a major source for Tillich’s existential ontology.[4][5]


The upshot is that God transcends mere personhood. God is personal but is not "a person{ but is the origin of the personal. God is universal mind, meaning God is not nature but is the foundation of nature and can speak through nature and is present in nature (though his energies) and beyond it. God cannot be Judged by the standards of anything we know in  nature although God knows each one of us better than we know ourselves.

Compare with divine simplity

According to the classical theism of Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas and their adherents, God is radically unlike creatures in that he is devoid of any complexity or composition, whether physical or metaphysical. Besides lacking spatial and temporal parts, God is free of matter-form composition, potency-act composition, and existence-essence composition. There is also no real distinction between God as subject of his attributes and his attributes. God is thus in a sense requiring clarification identical to each of his attributes, which implies that each attribute is identical to every other one. God is omniscient, then, not in virtue of instantiating or exemplifying omniscience — which would imply a real distinction between God and the property of omniscience — but by being omniscience. And the same holds for each of the divine omni-attributes: God is what he has as Augustine puts it in The City of God, XI, 10. As identical to each of his attributes, God is identical to his nature. And since his nature or essence is identical to his existence, God is identical to his existence. This is the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS). It is represented not only in classical Christian theology, but also in Jewish, Greek, and Islamic thought. It is to be understood as an affirmation of God's absolute transcendence of creatures. God is not only radically non-anthropomorphic, but radically non-creaturomorphic, not only in respect of the properties he possesses, but in his manner of possessing them. The simple God, we could say, differs in his very ontology from any and all created beings.[6]


Source:
[1]Dionysius the Areopagite: on Divine names and the Mystical Theology, trans. Clearance Edwin Rolt , New YorkNew York: Cosmio 2007, from original 1920 publication.  see also online versionChristian Classics Ethereal Library, on line version, The Author and his Influence, trans by, 1920  website URL:  by http://www.ccel.org/ccel/rolt/dionysius.iii.i.html
visited May 13,
[2] Ibid, Introduction, 4-5
[3] Pseudo-Dionysius, On Divine Names, Ibid 52
[4] Ibid, 53
[5] Ibid.

[6] William F. Vallicella, , "Divine Simplicity", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/divine-simplicity/. accessed 5/7/16

31 comments:

  1. So I'm confused. When you refer to the Neo Platonists thinking of God as transcending being, you say that was because they saw being as a mere flawed copy of reality. Was that Plotinus's reasoning?

    ReplyDelete
  2. that's what they claimed, I cant understand that thinning either because to me being equates to existing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The way I see it, God must transcend being in some sense. Becoming transcends being. Creation is the transition from non-being to being through a free act. God absorbs intohimself possibility and potentiality which is why he can interact with the world.

    Maybe there is an essential pole in God that is eternal and that is the part that transcends being. The Eastern Orthodox would call it his essence as opposed to his energies, but the latter are no less a part of him, imo. So Tillich is not completely right. And none of our determinations or dualities can apply to him other than symbolically or mythologically anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The way I see it, God must transcend being in some sense. Becoming transcends being. Creation is the transition from non-being to being through a free act. God absorbs intohimself possibility and potentiality which is why he can interact with the world.

    I don't know what that means,

    Maybe there is an essential pole in God that is eternal and that is the part that transcends being. The Eastern Orthodox would call it his essence as opposed to his energies, but the latter are no less a part of him, imo. So Tillich is not completely right. And none of our determinations or dualities can apply to him other than symbolically or mythologically anyway.

    to me being = exist Transcend being means you don;t exist

    ReplyDelete
  5. I appreciate your thoughtful analysis.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Just kidding, sort of. I can't believe that's all you have to say in response.

    'Transcend' means 'to go beyond,' not 'to fall short of.' You didn't respond to any of the other things I said either.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I am moving into Trump bash mode so not focusing on this.

    ReplyDelete
  8. You complain about no comments. I think this is one of the reasons why.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I just spent a couple of days dealing with that then other things come up. Besides can you really tell me what it means to say God transcends being? If God us Being itself how can God transcend what he is?

    If Being is existing then how can anything transcend existing?



    Augustine expresses the concept of the super-essential Godhead many times and in many ways. Augustine was a Platonist. In that regard perhaps his greatest innovation was to place the Platonic forms in the mind of God. That is a major innovation because it trumps the Neo-Platonistic following after Plotinus, who conceived of a form of the forms. In Augustinian understanding the equivalent of the “the one” the form that holds all other forms within itself is the mind of God. Augustine never made an argument for the existence of God because for him God was known with certainty and immediacy. God is immediately discerned in the apprehension of truth, thus need not be “proved.” God is the basis of all truth, and therefore, cannot be the object of questioning about truth, since God is he medium through which other truths can be known.[2] Tillich said:

    Augustine, after he had experienced all the implications of ancient skepticism, gave a classical answer to the problem of the two absolutes: they coincide in the nature of truth. Veritas is presupposed in ever philosophical argument; and veritas is God. You cannot deny truth as such because you could do it only in the name of truth, thus establishing truth. And if you establish truth you affirm God. “Where I have found the truth there I have found my God, the truth itself,” Augustine says. The question of the two Ultimates is solved in such a way that the religious Ultimate is presupposed in every philosophical question, including the question of God. God is the presupposition of the question of God. This is the ontological solution of the problem of the philosophy of religion. God can never be reached if he is the object of a question and not its basis.[3]

    Augustine says God is truth. He doesn’t so much say God is being as he says God is truth. But to say this in this way is actually in line with the general theme we have been discussing, the one I call “super-essential Godhead,” or Tillich’s existential ontology. Augustine puts the emphasis upon God’s name as love, not being. Since he was a neo Platonist he thought of true reality as beyond being and thus he thought of God as “beyond being.”[4] This makes no sense in a modern setting since for us “to be” is reality, and to not be part of being would meaning being unreal. But in the platonic context, true reality was beyond this level of reality and what we think of as “our reality” or “our world” is only a plane reflection of the true reality. We are creatures of a refection in a mud puddle and the thing reflected that is totally removed from our being is the true reality. It was this distinction Tillich tried to preserve by distinguishing between being and existence.

    ReplyDelete
  10. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  11. [2] Donald Keef, Thomism and the Ontological Theology: A Comparison of Systems. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1971, 140.

    The “two Ultimates” discussed are philosophy and Religion.

    [3] Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, 12-13


    [3] Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, 12-13

    [4] The quotation above from the Levenson and Westphal book says Augistine believe God was being itself, Marion seems to say that Augustine put God beyond being. I think it’s debatable as to which he did because he didn’t say directly which it was. I’m assuming Marion is probably right just because of the time in which he lived and because he was a Platonic thinker.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I sort of answered my own question in fn 3-4

    ReplyDelete
  13. This is really interesting when thought of in terms of the Trinity. 1 Cor. 8:5-6: "There is one God, the Father, from Whom are all things and for Whom we exist, and one Jesus Christ, through Whom are all things and through Whom we exist." The triune nature of God thus distinguishes between the Father as the ground of being, who is utterly beyond us (1 Tim. 6:16 - he "dwells in unapproachable light")-- and the Son as the interface, if you will, between the essential God the creation -- "Emmanuel, God with us." The third Person, the Holy Spirit, is then the active Presence of God with each of us, from the Father and through the Son.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I just spent a couple of days dealing with that then other things come up. Besides can you really tell me what it means to say God transcends being? If God us Being itself how can God transcend what he is?

    You're assuming that God IS the ground of being when this is the point we're debating. It could be that God is the ground of being but that God could also transcend being. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

    If the word being means anything. Schubert Ogden really ridiculed the idea that something could transcend being,

    If Being is existing then how can anything transcend existing?

    In the ways I've suggested in the posts I've made recently on this topic which you haven't responded to yet.

    I don't think yo really addressed that adequately

    As I've said, it seems that things like process and potentiality, freedom and creativity would have to incorporate what is not,or what is not yet, into themselves, and that these things would have to be part of God in order for God to create and interact with the world.

    There's a in "what is not" creatively and what is not existential you are saying a non existent thing can exist.


    All of these things are beyond what can be captured by an inventory of what is the case at any given time. You might say that God is atemporal,but for these things (process and potentiality, freedom and creativity) to be real and not just illusory for God, there must be an aspect of God's nature for which these things are real and not illusory.


    you just said non existence can exist now you say it can't,

    ReplyDelete
  15. we could think of beig as one level of existnece but not the highest, such as contingency, is that in line with your reasoning here Jim?

    ReplyDelete
  16. I don't think yo really addressed that adequately

    Maybe not, but you haven't addressed the points I've made at all, adequately or inadequately..

    If the word being means anything. Schubert Ogden really ridiculed the idea that something could transcend being,

    Okay, and your point is...what? That this big authority figure thinks it's ridiculous so it must be ridiculous?

    There's a in "what is not" creatively and what is not existential you are saying a non existent thing can exist.

    No, I'm saying there's a space, a gap in which what doesn't exist yet is allowed to come into being. A space of possibility. The gap is what is missing from what exists .

    you just said non existence can exist now you say it can't,

    I never said non-existence can exist. I said it's a part of reality. What's real is greater than what exists, imo.

    ReplyDelete
  17. we could think of beig as one level of existnece but not the highest, such as contingency, is that in line with your reasoning here Jim?

    My own idiosyncratic way of looking at it is that being and existence are one level of reality. there's also ideal objects like numbers and universals, and also possibility, freedom, consciousness, creativity, all united or synthesized in God and grounded in God but that God goes beyond being and existence.

    ReplyDelete
  18. My own idiosyncratic way of looking at it is that being and existence are one level of reality. there's also ideal objects like numbers and universals, and also possibility, freedom, consciousness, creativity, all united or synthesized in God and grounded in God but that God goes beyond being and existence.

    Interesting so you have your own version of the platonic realm gong,

    ReplyDelete
  19. More like a variety of process thought. How else to account for everything we see around us, such as a non-necessary world of becoming created by a necessary God of being?

    ReplyDelete
  20. There is no contradiction in contingent world being created by necessary God. Modern atheists try to argue that necessary can only create more necessity that's nuts.

    ReplyDelete
  21. How do you account for it without incorporating those properties I've been talking about into God's nature somehow? (Or placing them prior to God?)And I think you'd have to do it through actual participation and not just through this "in-itselfness" business, i.e. "God is process itself,""God is freedom itself," etc.

    ReplyDelete
  22. God can;t be made up of parts tat pre exist him since he always existed.

    possibility, freedom, consciousness, creativity, all of these would be synonymous and eternal as aspects of God.Possibility would be an aspect of creativity which is made possible by freedom and consciousness.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Not prior in a temporal sense. Whitehead thought that the ultimate principle of reality is creativity which is independent of God. Berdyaev thought that God eternally manifests out of the ungrund (abyss) of freedom. But this is all a digression from the original point that God transcends being through possibility, freedom, creativity and consciousness.

    ReplyDelete
  24. how can creativity be independent of God?

    ReplyDelete
  25. Skepie left a message. He thinks I/m angry and freaking out because Jim is disagreeing with me.I don't even see it as disagreement,I don't know that I disagree. I want him to explain it but I don;t see this as him disagreeing. This is the kind of thing Skepie can't understand it's called discussion, why he doesn't belong here.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Discussion? What discussion? No, I didn't get the sense that you were angry,just that you weren't that interested in discussion. You and Tillich have got it all figured it out ;)

    ReplyDelete
  27. yes I want discussion but my main mission is apologetic,I;m not just doming this to feel good about my own ideas. If apologetic get in the way I see that as my priority.

    ReplyDelete
  28. btw I ask how creativity can be independent of God you just told me to read whithead,that;s you closing down the discussion.

    ReplyDelete