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

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.

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.

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)

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.


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.



Source:

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Dionysius the Areopagite: on Divine names and the Mystical Theology, trans. Clearance Edwin Rolt , New York, New 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,

[1] Ibid, Introduction, 4-5

[1] Pseudo-Dionysius, On Divine Names, Ibid 52

[1] Ibid, 53

[1] Ibid.

The Greatest Film Ever: The Seventh Seal

knight (Max Von Sydow) playing chess with death




foundChivalry Now

The Seventh Seal


The knight playing chess with Death.
This movie, from 1957, is Ingar Bergman's greatest film, and considered by many to be one of the greatest films of all time.
The story is about a knight returning home from the crusades. He finds the land ravaged by plague and religious fanatics. On his journey, he is visited by Death, who agrees to let the knight live if he can beat him at a game of chess.
The following is taken from the script where the knight mistakenly thinks he is confessing to a priest, but it is Death who is listening. It expresses the existential struggle of this knight searching for truth.

Both the dialogue and the synopsis below are from the link I link to below "Chivalry Now"



Synopsis:

A knight tries to pray along the seaside, but is unable to. He is troubled by the requirements of faith. Although he has gone to the Holy Land to fight in the Crusade for God, all he saw there was death and injustice, and men of twisted faith. He asks himself, "where is God? What is the meaning of existence without Him? Where can I find any sense to life?" He is an idealist who is troubled. He is no longer set in the ideals given to him, but questions everything to find a greater truth. What troubled him most is that there seems to be no idealized truth to grasp onto, and this leaves him searching in despair.
The squire is more down to earth, the disenchanted intellectual who demands that everyone else see the world from his disenchantment. He has not only lost his ideals (if he ever had them), but lost the desire to find something greater than what he sees. He is the existentialist. Basically he resents his station, that of serving the more idealistic knight.

Death accepts the challenge of playing the game of chess, giving the knight a chance to continue search for God, and dedicate his life to doing one good act. One wonders if we are not all playing chess with Death, postponing the inevitable, which might be waiting for us around the next corner.

The married couple, the actors, represent a healthy relationship, despite their obvious hardships. They love each other, and their son. The father tells his wife that their son will be a great acrobat, that he will accomplish the incredible (keeping the ball suspended in mid-air). He then explains that the trick would be impossible for him or his wife, but not necessarily for Mikael. In this statement, he expresses hope for the future, and disavows limitations on the next generation. There is a simple idealism expressed in this. We live and then we die, allowing evolution to produce something better. We should facilitate this process. That the actor sees visions suggests that he is in tune with his own mystical experiences, which transcends the rituals of religion.

The squire has great disrespect for priests, whom he sees as taking advantage of common people, using fear as a tool. He degrades those religious idealists who created the idea of a Holy Crusade. The thought of religious fanatics beating themselves out of repentance frightens him.

The man who steals from the dead was previously a student of theology who proselytized going to the Crusade. He is now a thief, and attempts to rape the woman who discovers his treachery. The squire believes that this is the natural progression of religious leaders. The man belittles and threatens the actor, hating him for his simple authenticity. He later dies of the plague.

The burning of the witch demonstrates how our belief in God and angels and the devil are ultimately based on nothing we can see or touch. There is life, and there is death. The witch who believes in the devil is obviously insane. Are the priests who condemn her, and the soldiers who kill her much different? The knight experiences anguish at her death, as the squire points out that only emptiness awaits her.
The actor who has the affair with the blacksmith's wife feigns his own death. Before stabbing himself with the fake knife, he states that he will leave the unreality of his life, and take on the reality of a corpse. This is a powerful statement of existential thought. The living person is not static; he is always creating himself, with every choice and direction that he takes. This is likened to "unreality." The dead corpse is, in comparison, a fixed object, without conscious potential. It's reality does not change. It is dead, not alive.

The knight distracts Death long enough for the married couple to escape. This is his good deed, and the answer to what he was looking for. Our purpose is to preserve life for the future. Other than that, we cannot be sure of anything. Even Death seems pleased by the knight's pleasure. The knight asks Death for what he knows about the mysteries of life. Death can tell him nothing. It appears that Death is more of a reality than God.

The ending is very interesting. Everyone dies, except for the couple and their baby, who have escaped. The knight begs his unseen God for mercy, while the squire complains that he is wasting his breath. They both die, but who is the one who contributed the most to life? It is the discouraged idealist who seeks for truth. His life had more meaning in that he saved the lives of others

Bergmann was an atheist, the son of a minister and Chaplin to the King of Sweden. He produced a huge body of works in the 50's and 60's and set the tone for films in that decade and beyond. In such films as "Hour of the Wolf," "The seventh Seal," "Wild Strawberries," "Virgin Spring," "Crys and whispers," Bergmann wrestled with the oceanic topics of life, aunxt, meaning, the existence of God, the anxiety of being human.


watching those films makes up some of the happiest memories of my youth. For me he will always be the symbol of the greatness of art, the discovery of life, and the search for ultimate meaning.My two favorite films of all time are Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal. The only other director I place on the same level is Kurosawa.

Bergman is one of the finest examples of the style of atheism into which I fitted when I was young. Searching, pondering the great questions, an existentialist who is never satisfied with conventional answers. The thing about Bergman as an atheist is that he's the diametrical opposite of Dawkins. He wasn't arrogant about his unbelief, although he was a rebel of theater and film making, originally known as "one of the angry young men" of early 50s. He knew he was great and was very arrogant in the arts, but in terms of eternity and the transcendent, he deals with religion with great respect. Even when he mocks religion he's not mocking the people for believing it, and he never makes a mockery of the search.He's still searching himself. He's like someone saying "If you find anything I would still like to know, but I don't think you are going to." He doesn't handle religion with kid gloves, its obvious he thought most of it was nonsense, but he never degrades the sense of wonder at the holy or the luminosity or realization of our need to seek the ultimate.

"The Seventh Seal" has all of these features. Nothing is more of a slap in the face to blind obedience and unthinking conformity of the religious history of the West than Bergman's scenes such as, burning the girl at the steak, and the girl who has faith Satan will save her suddenly realizes "there's no body there to save me and I'm going to die now." The superstition of the guy smearing the blood and bile of a black dog on the walls to keep the plague away. These are stinging rebuttals to traditional organized religion. The Circus performers, especially the husband, child-like and innocent, happy, only concerned with the happiness of his family and his art, represent those for whom faith is real. The husband sees the Virgin Mary everywhere and at times we see her tripping by in the background while no one else notices.

The sincere seeker is never berated by Bergman, but human frailty is never masked. The old actor is always seeking other men's wives to court, the young woodman's wife is never faithful, the three are always seeking to do each other harm. Yet at the same time this mockery, it's a fares.

The Knight is a seeker but he's also afraid. He seeks certainty. He's not seeking the infinite or the divine necessarily but certainty as to what's true. He confesses this to one whom he takes for a priest but it's really death in disguise. This is how death learns the combination of knight and bishop he's been uses and then beats him. The confession made to death is about his need for certainty and his fear of not finding it. So death is saying in a sense, "I'm the only certainty, and you only find it after you come with me."

Here's an excerpt of the confession to death, on Chivalry Now.

ANTONIUS: I want to confess, as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face, and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to men has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams.

DEATH: Yet you do not want to die.

ANTONIUS: Yes I do.

DEATH: What are you waiting for?

ANTONIUS: Knowledge.

DEATH: You want a guarantee?


ANTONIUS: Call it what you will. Is it so hard to conceive of God with one's senses? Why must He hide in a mist of vague promises and invisible miracles? How are we to believe the believers when we don't believe ourselves? What will become of us who want to believe, but cannot? And what of those who neither will nor can believe? Why can I not kill God within me? Why does He go on living in a painful, humiliating way? I want to tear Him out of my heart. But He remains a mocking reality which I cannot get rid of. I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out His hand, show His face, speak to me. But He is silent. I cry to Him in the dark, but there seems to be no one there.


DEATH: Perhaps there is no one there.

ANTONIUS: Then life is a senseless terror. No man can live with Death and know that everything is [for] nothing.

DEATH: Most people think neither of Death nor nothingness.

ANTONIUS: Until they stand on the edge of life, and see the Darkness.

Bergman is an odd mixture, he was cutting edge sixties rebel in the arts, worldly, sophisticated, atheist, intellectual. Yet he was sensitive to the search for God and the desire to find truth. His films are paradoxical as well. The film is a combination of Mel Brooks camp humor, with high school play where the drama teacher has made the production very stagy and it's all shot on home movie. There are times when the production seems so rough you can swear it is a home movie. Then you go to the coffee shop after and talk about the existence of God for three hours because you realize you have seen a great film and it has transported you into the search. His films are also paradoxical as he was, they convey this greatness. To appear so cheap and amateur to leave one with the sense of having seen a truly great work of art it has to be truly great.


The major Characters dance over the hill with death, they all die of the plague but all we see is they meat death, then they all dance away with him. They are spied by the only survives of the traveling companions, the hippie-like performers and their young son, who watch them dance over the horizon into eternity.

Argument from the Sublime: Good is Sublmie and Evil is a Fall

 


 As I watched tv late the other night I saw one of those Christian stations where they show scenes of nature and play chruch music and you just sit there memorized by the beauty. Then they had a commentary by a guy I like named Paul Williams (not the short blond pudgy song writer of the 70s). This would be the worship network's own Paul Williams. About the only Christian Television I watch, those 'creation spaces.' Williams is about the only Christian talking head I like listening to on Christian tv. He had a little thing about the beauty of nature point beyond themselves to some greater reality because he feels there must be "someone to thank for it all." This reminded me of a God argument on my list I rarely use, no. 9 "argument from the sublime." My argument is a lot more sophisticated than Williams little one liner, but basically hints at the same idea. I was also reminded it of it's corollary and wondered if I could answer it. The corollary: The ugly evil horrible things in nature must also point beyond themselves. Do we also have God to thank for the bad things? If so how do we square that with Christian theology, and if not, why not? The myth of the fall? That opens another can of worms, in the from of "why wold God allow he fall." These are of course perinial questions I've known them all my life, I don't imagine I've solved them and I'm sure they will be around as long as humanity is around.


The other Paul Williams

 The answer that I would tentatively take to the question of the fall must be understood against the background of my argument from sublime. It's ot argument from beauty per se but form the sublime which is somewhat different. The sublime can be either beautiful or terrible, horrible, ugly, monsters, catastrophic. Sublime does not mean "good." It means something beyond, far beyond our understanding or our limits. In the sense of the "terrible sublime" 9/11 was sublime. The Holocaust was sublime. These things totally transcend our limits, our capacity to understand and the framework we keep for the real. The good and the beautiful can surely be sublime as well. the Sunset is  the beautiful sublime, Mother Teresa is the good sublime. To that extent the sublime itself sort of answers the issue of can we infer from evil that we have one to thank for that too? Of course there is always the answer that yes we do have one to blame for evil but it's not God.  On the other hand since this will lead to the issue "isn't God more powerful why couldn't he stop satan," then we can't really just stop there. We need a transcendent overall answer that incorporates the whole.

The answer is, tentatively, that the sublime, being either beautiful or terrible points to a reality beyond the natural, the mundane. It points to a meaning beyond the world and beyond itself, beyond the things that make up the sublime of the moment. We get a sense of the overall profound nature of being and the ground and depth of being. We don't necessarily have a theological answer all wrapped up and ready to go but we can infer one. The sublime is not in itself a fall but evil is. That is to say, evil can surely be sublime, such as the Holocaust, but the evil aspects are not the same kind of thing that the good aspects of subliminal are, they are a fall from the good. How do we know they are a fall? Consider the creative and giving nature of being, love, the good. These are aspects that go together. Goodness is creative it's building it's not destructive, healing is not destroying. There's a sense in which destroying is part of work of healing and building, but in that sense it's not the evil aspects of destruction. The evil aspect is it's pointless non creative part of destruction, such as the Holocaust or 9/11.

Being, in itself the basic thing that it is to be is not to cease being not to destroy or take away but a positive force of being there, a standing firm a sense of giving. Being creates more being. Weather biological organizers, viruses, germs, evolution all the basic forces that enable prolongation of life are also creative of life. Being is giving out and leads to more being. Evil is a falling away from this standpoint of being there and healing and building and giving. Evil is a pointless taking away, destruction. Thus evil is a departure form the original, a falling away from the basic footing of the good or of being. Evil moves toward non being. Evil destructive, it creates no being, it is moving toward a loss of being. Thus the evil aspects have an element that is more than just the terrible sublime but also the pointless falling away form the sublime. That means we resisting tagging God with the responsibility for evil. Evil is moving in a direction away form God and from what God is and God does. Evil is a falling away.

St. Augustine said evil is the absence of the good. Evil is not a valid thing or a positive force is the absence of something. Like atheism is the absence of a belief, evil is the absence of the good. It's a falling away. It's not something God does it's something moves away form God. It's the putting away of God's love and God's presence and being without God. Evil is the absence of God. Now I will present my argument form the sublime and then tie it all up at the end. 





Argument from The Sublime.

A. Aesthetic and Sublime clues to transcendence.

It always used to sound so stupid to me when people would say "O, look at the beautiful sun set, how can people deny that there's a God? (my Mother used to say that). Than after becoming a Christian I saw a really great sunset one day, the sky decked out in orange, pink, Gold, peach, cobalt, cerillian, and all punctuated by the most delicate suffering strips. It suddenly occurred to me why anyone would think that. Because we are the type of beings that are capable of appreciating beauty. It is not merely that aesthetic apprehension is beyond the ability of a dead random universe to produce, but that it spurs us to consider higher things. We realize from the appreciation of these things, art, music, poetry, literature, nature, that there is a realm of the sublime which transcends the mundane world of reductionism. I don't necessarily mean a supernatural realm--it could be a "realm" of our emergent qualities. But the fact that we can appreicate these things indicates that there is more to reality than merely the realm of science, technology, and the that to which reality is reduced by technocratic natrualists who can't appreciate higher possbilities.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Sublime" refers to an aesthetic value in which the primary factor is the presence or suggestion of transcendent vastness or greatness, as of power, heroism, extent in space or time. It differs from greatness or grandeur in that these are as such capable of being completely grasped or measured. By contrast, the sublime, while in one aspect apprehended and grasped as a whole, is felt as transcending our normal standards of measurement or achievement. Two elements are emphasized in varying degree by different writers, and probably varying in different observers: (1) a certain baffling of our faculty with feeling of limitation akin to awe and veneration; (2) a stimulation of our abilities and elevation of the self in sympathy with its object.

That all people, given the right exposure, can appreciate the sublime, beauty in nature and art, in such a way as to seek some realm beyond that of the mudane physical is a direct implication that something more exists to be found. While this is not a proof of God in and of itself, it might be logica to infur from this sense of transcendence that reality is more than just the physical realm, and therefore, even though this is a highly subjective notion, if one finds that God satisfies this urge best of all, than God is probably the object of our longings for the sublime.

Peter Suber's Infinite Reflections
All college address at ST. John's College in Oct. 96
published St John's Review XLIV 2 (1998) 1-59
The Sublimity of the Infinite

"I am profoundly grateful that understanding infinity does not deprive it of its majesty. If the infinite were only interesting because of the paradoxes it generates, and the absorbing academic issues raised by the need to resolve them, then it would not be studied any more than self-reference, a prolific but more pedestrian engine of paradox. But the infinite is also majestic, one might say infinitely majestic."

"An hour under a clear sky at night, looking up, gives some sense of this. The depth of space is a wild blue yonder, not a true, perceived infinity.[Note 34] But it inspires contemplation of the true infinite, and the slightest brush with that idea is breath-taking, invigorating, expanding, lifting, calming, but also agitating, alluring, but also distant and magnificently indifferent. One reason to study mathematics is that you can get these feelings in broad daylight or indoors."

"There are many ways to become precise about these feelings, and many ways to praise and honor the infinite. I'd like to use Kant's term: it is sublime."[Note 35]

Peter Suber's Infinite Reflections
All college address at ST. John's College in Oct. 96
published St John's Review XLIV 2 (1998) 1-59

"Just for comparison, Cantor had a different set of numinous feelings about the infinite. He was not only a great mathematician, but a very religious man and by some standards a mystic. Yet his mysticism was supported by his mathematics, which to him was at least as strong an argument for the mathematics as for the mysticism.[Note 36] Apart from claiming divine inspiration for his work, we don't know exactly what spiritual views he linked to his mathematics, but his theorems[Note 37] give support to the following. Measured in meters, we are tiny specks compared to the universe at large. But measured in dimensionless points, we are as large as the universe: a proper subset, but one with the same cardinality as the whole. Similarly, measured in meters, we may be off in a corner of the universe. But measured in points, the distance is equally great in all directions, whether universe is finite or infinite; that puts us in the center, wherever we are. Measured in days, our lives are insignificant hiccups in the expanse of past and future time. But measured in points of time, our lives are as long as universe is old. We are as small as we seem, but simultaneously, by a most reasonable measure, co-extensive with the totality of being in both space and time. This is truly (as Blake put it) "[t]o see the world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour."[Note 38]

B. How do we get from the Sublime to God?

The first step is realizing we are the kind of beings who can appreciate the sublime. This appreiciation, though culturally bound, and though it is an aquired taste, stems form our basic nature as personally aware centers of consciousness. This is espeicially true in the way that art makes us think of transcendence. Why should the cold universe be able to produce centers of conscious awareness from dead matter? The structure for awareness must exist in the universe, and since the object of our awareness seems to be a longing for the sublime we can infurr that the answers lies in the sublime, in God.

 Sublime as Co-determinate of Transcendent Reality.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philsophy
James McCosh writting of Archibold Alison's theories
on the Sublime

"The conclusion, therefore, in which I wish to rest is, that the beauty and sublimity which is felt in the various appearances of matter are finally to be ascribed to their expression of mind; or to their being, either directly or indirectly, the signs of those qualities of mind, which are fitted, by the constitution of our nature, to affect us with pleasing or interesting emotion." There is a singular mixture of truth and error in this statement: truth, in tracing all beauty and sublimity to the expression of mind; but error, in placing it in qualities which raise emotion according to our constitution. Beauty, and sublimity are not the same as the true and the good; but they are the expression and the signs of the true and the good, suggested by the objects that evidently participate in them." {316}

 God is co-determinate of Transcendence.

If there is a higher reality there must be something real about it. To transcend the world is to obtain something of some higher realm. But an empty higher realm is meaningless. Since we are the kind of beings who can percieve the trasncendent we must have been created in such as way that we are capable of understanding the transcendent. If beauty is a sign of the good than the sublime must be a sign of the source of the good. Since we are personally conscious beings capable of reading the transcendent in a sunset we must have been created by a conscious being who is cabable of putting it there.

C) Objection answered.

All The basic objections deal with reducing the phenominon to some naturalistic explaination and naturalizing it.

1) Fear , Terror and beauty.

The skeptic might argue that the sublime is merely the resut of feeling overwhealed by the huge or awed by the beautiful and is therefore merely a stemulous response.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philsophy

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/sublime.htm

"The element of magnitude in beauty was noted by Aristotle, and given by him a prominent place in tragedy. But the earliest extant determination of the sublime as a distinct conception is in the treatise ascribed to Longinus, but now supposed to be of earlier date (first century C.E.). In modern philosophy, it was given special prominence by Edmund Burke in his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful (1756) and Henry Home in his Elements of Criticism who sought a psychological and physiological explanation. According to Burke, it is caused by a "mode of terror or pain," and is contrasted with the beautiful (rather than being part of the beautiful). Kant also distinguished it as a separate category form beauty, making it apply properly only to the mind, not to the object, and giving it a peculiar moral effect in opposing "the interests of sense." He distinguished a mathematical sublime of extension in space or time, and a dynamic of power. Most subsequent writers on aesthetics tend to bring the sublime within the beautiful in the broader sense insofar as its aesthetic quality is closely related to that of beauty."

a) Can view sublime in saftey.

Suber:

"As long as we are physically safe when viewing the sublime immensity, Kant argues, it helps us know our moral dignity and nonphysical invulnerability undiminished, even accentuated, by our forceful acknowledgment of our physical smallness and frailty."[Note 42]

b) Can't be reduced to any one of these elments.

  Clearlythe sublime is not reducible to just fear, terror, or beauty. If so, why would these three (really two) very different things bring on the same response? And again this is missing the mark. The real question is why are we the sort of beings who can experience this sense? Animals in nature navigate to a large extent by pattern recognition. We should not be surprised to find that we did evolve a sense of the sublime, we are after all physical creates and we evolved. On the other hand why would be evolve such a highhanded sense of it? And moreover, since it is not reducible to any one of these things, but may be triggered by them (as well as by mathematics and abstractions) than it is transcendent in itself beyond any of these reductionist accounts.

2) Pattern recognition.

Of course the reductionists will tell us that beauty and aesthetics began as some form of communication, it helped us determine who to mate with and how to avoid posion berries or something. To take that line is merely silly. It simpley reduces these things to less than they are. If we catch a glipse of the sublime we do understand that "something is afoot in the universe" (uh, Godwise).

a) Not reduceable to immensity or beauty.

The Recognition of certain states of being, or tensions produced by being dwarfed in immensity bring on the sublime.
Peter Suber's Infinite Reflections
All college address at ST. John's College in Oct. 96
published St John's Review XLIV 2 (1998) 1-59

"Kant's theory of the sublime does not rest on these Cantorian theorems. His chief thesis for our purposes is that, "That is sublime in comparison with which everything else is small."[Note 39] Clearly the infinitely large is a perfect fit for this definition.[Note 40]

"The sublime is not an easy notion, and the best approach to it may be via negativa, showing how it differs from something familiar, the beautiful. Sticking only to those differences which bear most on the sublimity of the infinite, Kant says that the beautiful concerns a bounded object while the sublime object can be unbounded; the beautiful is compatible with charms while the sublime is not; the beautiful attracts the mind while the sublime both attracts and repels it; and the beautiful "seems as it were predetermined for our power of judgment" while the sublime is "incommensurate with our power of exhibition, and as it were violent to our imagination, and yet we judge it all the more sublime for that."[Note 41]

"The infinitely large meets these criteria almost by design. The infinitely large is unbounded, incommensurate with our powers of imagination, and to engage and satisfy us it no more needs charm than spring water needs sugar. It is so large that some of its proper subsets are just as large, a property shared by no finite magnitude."

"What triggers the feeling of the sublime most is immensity. Immensity in turn makes us feel a tension between two aspects of ourselves. On the one hand it makes us feel the inadequacy of our senses and imagination. On the other it makes us feel that there is more to us than senses and imagination, whose adequacy cannot be brought into question by immensity, no matter how spectacular or infinite. This second dimension of ourselves is not conception but moral vocation. While physically the immensity dwarfs us into insignificance, this very fact highlights that within us which is not dwarfed.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philsophy James McCosh writting of Archibold Alison's theories
on the Sublime


"But there is a higher element than all this in beauty; an element seen by Plato and by those who have so far caught his spirit,-- such as, Augustine, Cousin, MacVicar, and Ruskin, but commonly overlooked by men of science and the upholders {315} of the association theory. The mere sensations or perceptions called forth by the presence of harmonious sounds, colors, and proportional forms, is not the main ingredient in the lovely and the grand. Beauty, after all, lies essentially in the ideas evoked. I hold by an association theory on this subject. But the ideas entitled to be called aesthetic should be of mind, and the higher forms of mind, intellectual and moral. There was, therefore, grand truth in the speculation of Plato, that beauty consists in the bounding of the waste, in the formation of order out of chaos; or, in other words, in harmony and proportion. There was truth in the theory of Augustine, that beauty consists ill order and design; and in that of Hutcheson, that it consists in unity with variety. Alison had, at times, a glimpse of this truth, but then lost sight of it. He speaks with favor of the doctrine held by Reid, that matter is not beautiful in itself, but derives its beauty from the expression of mind; he holds it true, so far as the qualities of matter are immediate signs of the powers or capacities of mind, and in so far as they are signs of those affections or dispositions of mind which we love, or with which we are formed to sympathize. He thus sums up his views: "

b) Therefore, not reduceable to patterns.

"The idea in the pattern recognition argument is that patterns that trigger the sense of the sublime key us in to the feelings of fear or beauty that we have experinced in the past and almost hypnotically cerate the sense of awe. Nevertheless the concept is comlpex and cannot be reduced to merely a sring of patterns. This argument makes sense in thinking of music or visual effects, but form the sense of aloneness in nature or the night sky we are reaction to more than juat pattern recognition. IT can also affect us with new pattterns or with non -physical phenomena such as mathematics."

3) Chemical determinism.

a) Functionalist can't make good on their claims.

The brain/mind reductionists that try to say that consciousness is nothing more than chemicals in the brain (brain function) are simpley missing the point. Here is a long (I mean really long long long) boring dry but excellently scientific article showing that these guys are no where near figuring out what consciousness is, and that the complexity of the brain is still so vast we can look in wonderment at the sunset and dream of trasncendent possibilities, and commune with nature and sense God's reality without fear that we are nothing more than an accidently produced batch of neurons chemicals. Lantz Miller (who is not a Christian and it not a religious article) The Hard Sell of Human Consciousness (part I).
(See also the answers below on Consciousness argument which draw upon Miller's work)

b) Reduction loses phenomena.

To reduce the sublime to mere chemical determinism or brian functionalism loses the phenomena. When we try to analyze or disect the sublime we lose the charictoristics that trigger it. These attempts merely ignore what is being experienced.

4) Evolutionary function.

One of the major arguments is that we appreciate beauty as an evolutionary function so that we will seek out the better mates and have good genes. But this is super reductionism that ignores all kinds of phenomena. I do not get horny looking at sunset s or studying set theory, I do sense the sublime on those occassions. The sublime is a value added proposition and there is basically no reason for it in evolution.

More on Wednesday.

Introducing my new website: The Religious A Priori

I have a new website that is designed to eventually replace Doxa. I'm just unveiling it so I have still a lot of stuff to up up. It's mostly new material, I have some things form Doxa but I'm trying to update everything and basically just start over.

This site is mostly arguments about God and belief at this point, but I expect to cover all the categories covered by Doxa: God, Jesus, Bible, Science, Theology,  Society.

It also features a lot of articles from this blog on the problems of atheism.

I have included the best arguemnts on my realizing God approach from this blog and other aspects from the blog.

The site is here: The Religious A Priori

Answering Miller's "Right post" on Modal Argument

Before I get started on this I need to make a caveat. Tillich was against the OA because he felt it contradicted the concept of the God as being itself, and instead sought to prove the existence of a greatest being which is contrary to the concept of God as being itself. He also imposed or at least said things taken by some to be imply a version of the OA that could be re-formulated. I have not had a chance to talk about this on my blog yet. I don't think I have time to present the ins and outs of it here. But it is important to understand that in some sense I agree with Miller and with opponents of the modal argument but in other ways I disagree with them.
This is the post Miller linked to that said his more sophisticated understanding of and refutation of the Modal argument.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Modal ontological argument, revisited

Let's revisit the modal ontological arguments for God. Though I have covered these arguments and variations at length, and have not changed my opinion about them, I didn't necessarily cover them in the clearest manner possible. It's a tough balance, because for most people, symbolic logic is like math. Math = scary! Other readers understand the symbolic logic, but clearly have difficulties translating between the symbols and their underlying meaning. My goal is to explain it so both groups understand what I'm saying.

I do understand modal logic, in a way, but I don't claim to be an expert. I don't like using the symbols, not because I think they are wrong for I have several problems with it, both intellectual  and personal. The intellectual: I am a phenomenoloist so I don't like that sort hard cast logic, even though I do believe that it's right in matters that can be deduced. I don't like the perspective of trying to make that the major or only form of learning. Personal: I  have dyslexia so the shift about of many symbols is hard for me becuase it tends to wind up in my little fevered brain switching the symbols on me. The same is true of letters in reading of course, but reading English is raiser and I'm more use to it.

Miller:

Modal ontological argument, reviewed

Definition: If God exists, then God necessarily exists.
Premise: It is possible that God exists.
[Insert mess of logical reasoning here]
Conclusion: God exists.

Meta:I think the premise is what you call "definition" and the second line is either a minor premise or corollary.No matter.

Miller:

I omitted the mess of logical reasoning because I don't want to scare away my readers. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult to convey the amount of respect the logical arguments deserve. Richard Dawkins and other atheists often seem to think it's all a bunch of high-sounding gibberish. And perhaps it is. But that particular gibberish is absolutely solid, as solid as 2+2=4.

Meta: I appreciate that.


There are basically two reasonable objections to the argument. Either we must object to the premise, or object to the definition.

Objection to the premise

To explain the problem with the premise, I must distinguish between two kinds of possibility.

Epistemological possibility: For all we know, God exists.
Modal possibility: Among the set of "possible worlds", there exists a world in which God exists.

Meta:Problem: Plantinga's possible worlds argument (for God) asserts that God must exist in all worlds or none. You seem to imply here that the epistemological possibility is "God may exist in some world." While that is an epistemological possibility that possibility is demonstrated false by the argument Plantinga makes. Meanwhile the modal possibility is just as impossible. There cannot be a state of affairs such that God exists in one world only and not in all possible worlds. If it is possible that God exists in one possible world then God must exist in all possible worlds. That is a certainty if we define God as being itself.

Miller:

The conclusion of the proof follows only from modal possibility, not from epistemological possibility. However, the epistemological statement is the one that is intuitively true, while the modal statement could be true or false. Modal possibility is intended to be a translation from epistemological possibility to logic, but the translation is not perfect.

Meta:I think the assumption here is false for reasons stated above.

Miller:

In particular, the translation fails when we talk about the set of possible worlds itself.

Epistemological statement: For all we know, the universe is deterministic (ie there is only one possible world).
Modal translation: Among the set of "possible worlds", there exists a world in which it is true that there is only one possible world.
The epistemological statement is sensible, but if we naively copy it as a modal statement, it's a mess. The first statement only says that the universe may be deterministic, while the second statement can be used to prove that the universe must be deterministic. Clearly, we need to be careful with our translations when discussing determinism.

Meta:If I'm right about what you are trying to do then you are totally wrong. If I understand you correctly, that you are trying to supposes that the argument for God is based upon moving the possibility of God from epistemology to modality, that then you argue the impossibility of the move and that creates the impossible the "no such thing as God merely possible" clause can't be transformed from one to the other. If that's what you are doing you making several mistakes.

(1) Just because "for all we know God might exist" is an epistemolgoical statment that does not mean that the existence of God is only a epistemolgical possibility that is excluded in some way form the modal realm.

(2) the possibility of determinism is not a negation of God; God can create deterministic universes and thus God can exist in deterministic universes.

(3) There is also the possibility that determinism is impossible.

Miller:

Similar to determinism, the existence of God also says something about the set of possible worlds. If God exists, then s/he exists in all possible worlds. If an object does not exist in all possible worlds, then we cannot call it God. So we need to be careful with our translations when discussing God too.

Meta:That would seem to contradict my previous assumption, that I'm wrong about what you are trying to say. But I'm leaving it in anyway just in case.

Miller:

Here is a much better translation to logic:

Epistemological statement: For all I know, God exists
Logical translation: God exists, or God does not exist.

The conclusion of the ontological argument does not follow from this proper translation.

Meta: you lost me on this. You seem to be creating a useless distinction between epistemology and logic where one need not be made. All logical truths are also epistemological problems, everything that exists epistemically also exists logcially.

Miller

Even proponents of the modal ontological argument must accept that there are problems with translation. If we take the statement, "For all I know, God doesn't exist" and naively translate it to modal logic, then we would conclude that God doesn't exist.

Meta: I think the translation bit is a useless gimmick. Belief in God is not confined to one type of thought and has to be "translated" into another. This is super metaphysics, I don't see any reason to make this sort of metaphysical assumption. Its' not as though some questions are intrinsically given to epistemology and barred from logic and vice verse. Its' totally a matter of the way you structure your sentences. Belief in God is as much at home in modal logic as anything. The statement "If God exists then God must exist necessarily" is a statement of modal logic. By calling it "definition" you have screened it off form the actual logic of the argument but it's as much a modal statement as anything.

In Baird's presentation of Hartshorne's argument he did not call it the definition.

Miller:
Alternate premise: Logical consistency

Some ontological arguments have a cleverer premise to replace the old one.

Old Premise: It is possible that God exists.
New Premise: There is no contradiction in the existence of God. In other words, God is "consistent."

The old premise logically follows from the new one. If you're familiar with symbolic logic, I hope you already knew this. If not, here is a simple proof.

Suppose that the old premise is false; it is not possible that God exists. The statement "If P, then Q" is always true if P is false. Likewise, the statement "If God exists, then Q" is always true, because God doesn't exist. It's true even if Q is a contradictory statement (ie "God is blue and not blue"). Therefore, the new premise is false; the existence of God implies a contradiction.

Meta: Truth by stipulation. you can't stipulate the non existence of God.

Miller:

The statement "If P, then Q" is always true if P is false.

this I do not understand. If P is false (and the premise is "if P then Q") then the false nature of P means Q is also false because Q depends upon P. This is true in modus ponens.

If the old premise is false, then the new premise is false. Equivalently, if the new premise is true, then the old premise is true.

not what what said. you said if P is false than if P :. Q would mean Q is true.

Miller:

But now we will run into another problem of translation. I will distinguish between two kinds of consistency.

Self-consistency: The object has no contradicting properties in its definition.
Logical consistency: The object implies no contradictions.

Proponents of the ontological argument often expect me to disprove the self-consistency of God. Perhaps they expect me to argue that God's omnipotence contradicts its omniscience, or something like that. But they fail to realize that I don't have to. The proof requires logical consistency, not self-consistency.

Self-consistency is not sufficient to establish logical consistency. For an object to be logically consistent, not only must its definition be properly formed, but the world must cooperate. (More precisely, the set of "possible worlds" must cooperate.) Suppose that the world does not cooperate, and the object does not exist. If the object does not exist, then the existence of the object implies a contradiction. Namely, it implies that the object both exists and does not exist. I didn't even have to look at the definition of the object.

Meta: There's a huge amount with this.

(1) you  make an arbitrary distinction between "self constancy and logical consistency." that would assume there some disemboweled concept "logic" floating around out there that has nothing to do with objects per se. You are really assuming that things in the world have to fit with the rules of femoral logic and those rules are arbitrary. The only real contradiction that would matter is self consistency. I don't necessarily play that out in terms of omniscience vs omnipotence, it could be any number of ways.

(2) The world "cooperating" is begging the question. you can't argue the world is not reflecting the truth of God because three dozen God arguments show that it does. You can't start by asserting there is no God any more than I can start by asserting that there is.

(3) The OA in and of itself argues that the greatest thought is about the greatest truth. The argument is supposed to reflect the truth of God and is itself a matter of the reality cooperating to show the truth of God.

Miller:

Of course, I don't know whether the world cooperates with the ontological proof or not. The proponents have no idea either, but think they do.

Meta we have a good hint in what I just said, the greatest idea is about the greatest truth.


Miller:

Philosophers ought to teach themselves some mathematics. In geometry, there is a famous axiom called the Parallel postulate. It is famous because many mathematicians thought they could prove it. Modern mathematicians know that it is impossible to prove, because there is no contradiction in assuming it false. Likewise, it is impossible to disprove. The Parallel postulate is self-consistent. The negation of the Parallel postulate is also self-consistent. But in any given geometrical system, only one can be true. Thus, only one can be logically consistent.

Meta: But that's argument from analogy. That proves nothing about the modal argument.


Objection to the Definition of God

Miller

Definition: If God exists, then God necessarily exists.

If we define a fork to be an object with a handle and prongs, then we can give the following statement: "If a fork exists, then it has prongs". If a fork does not exist, we can't even talk about "it", much less ascribe it properties. If an object does not have prongs, then it is not a fork. That is the rationale behind the definition.

Meta: I think I already dealt with this stuff before. First of all you are making a mistake by calling it a defintion.The statement is conditional, definitions are not conditional statements so it can't really be one. It's more like a first premise. But it's based upon the definition of God as necessary and not contingent. That definition is not open to debate. It is not defining God into existence and the assertion that it is is merely clutching at straws. It's a failure to understand this is a given, it's what we believe. It can no more be disputed or disproved  as a valid premise than the statement that I love my mother or that my name is Joe.It's a basic given, the fundamental of a belief system and the assumed construct of the God concept that we talk about. you have to deal with it what we believe on it's own terms of not seek to discuss it. You can't dictate or alter our belief system just becuase you don't like it's fundamental premise.

Now proving that God can't exist necessity would come under the heading of showing a contradiction in the concept of God. That would be valid if you could do it, so good luck with that. You can't just make the premise go away just because you don't like.


Miller:

How can you disagree with a definition? Can't we define any object we like? If the definition makes no sense, can't we just say that the object doesn't exist?

Meta: no because your objective is not founded upon it not making sense or you  would be able to prove a contrdication in God. You passed on that before, you can't show me one. This concept makes sense. Its not a contradition and it's not something something makes no sense I understand it perfectly, it makes sense to me, it makes sense to the believer.

Ah but here's a major major MAJOR sign post: big read sign here saying "THIS IS IMPORTANT>"

Atheist and theist live in two different worlds. The world I live in is totally different from the world tha Miller lives in. It doesn't make sense to him because his ideology has led him to embrace only constructs that eject this notion from reality. But because I have come to see the universe in terms of this construct, and I find it true becuase works and my understanding of the world works perfectly with it, the two fit hand in glove, but they do so only because I can see it. The ground shifted for me and it has not so shifted for Mr. Miller. That is no poor reflection on him, it's just the way it is..

What this means is the way he looks at the world the world doesn't cooperate with the argument and the concept of necessary God does not make sense. I suspect this is in large part because he thinks of God as a big man in the sky and when I say "eternal necessary being" he thinks "a being" rather than being itself. Of course that's problematic because he's not going to see it unless he wants to. IF I try to explain it he will probably say (he has already no doubt) "what the hell is being itself?" We will be back at square one because he doesn't see the world that way either.

So that's what's really stand between us, this view of things that will not allow one to understand the concept and will not allow the other to let go of it.


Miller:

I don't know about philosophy, but in mathematics, you can't just define any object you like. Consider the set of all sets that do not include themselves (like the male barber who shaves all men who do not shave themselves). Call this Russell's Set. In "naive" set theory, you are allowed to define any set you like, including Russell's set. But Russell's set leads to a paradox. Therefore, "naive" set theory is inconsistent.

Meta: Part of the problem here is you are thinking of it as an object. That what I mean when I say atheist are "thing bound." You are wrapped up in the surface level of things and it's a matter of empirical objects vs objects of thought in your head and that's just putting everything on the level of thing hood. Along comes God who is not a "who" and not  "he" and not an "it" but something beyond understanding and you go "wait, If I can't understanding I can't control it, so I can't accept somethign I can't control."

That's really what it's all about. belief vs skepticism is about being willing to let go of control and be controlled by the ultimate, vs trying to control the ultimate and reduce the unconditioned to an "it." This is what I'm talking about above where I sate the caveat.


Miller:

Naturally, mathematicians want a set theory that doesn't have paradoxes. So they formulated Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, which has specific rules dictating what sets you are allowed to define. These rules do not allow us to define Russell's Set, and thus avoid its paradoxes.

Meta: So much the worse for mathematicians. Jesus said "unless you become as an undergraduate, you can't enter the graduate school of heaven."

Miller:

Is modal logic more like "naive" set theory, or like Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory? Can you define anything you like, or do you have to follow specific rules? I suspect it depends on your choice of axioms. It's a difficult question that I don't feel qualified to answer, which is why I prefer objections to the premise.

Meta: Remember I said the problem goes back to thinking of it as an object (God). If you think of God as an object that can be proved, (then of course that also means it can be controlled) you are reducing God from the ground of being to an object in being. Then you are trying to ask if we can define objects anyway but you already doing that. You are doing exactly what you castigate the MA for doing, reducing reality to an object that you can control and then trying to define it yourself.

Of course that's the necessary first step in the battle for control of the object.  If you are doing to seek to ban God from his own reality then you have to first take control of the concept of of God as an object, control is what all reductionists seek. Reduction = control.

At this rate the  MA might be wrong-headed so the argument has been beaten by its own need to be proven. Not beaten by being false but beaten by being something that requires proof, the mere fact that it can be proved makes it worse. That's such an absurdity.

It's far more logical to think about it in its proper terms, not as an object but as a belief, as a apprehension, something religious belief lights upon and grasps as a perception. It's not a definition at all. It shares with definitions that both are merely illumination, not controls. We have to understand God as the unconditioned then we know we  can't jack around definitions at all.

The argument is saved and put back together by the realization that it's proving a ratinoal warrant not a proof that can't be disputed. It 'not proving an object but a concept. What's proved about the concept is the prima facie nature of it as a reason for belief. That's the very aspect that definition argument was designed by atheists to mask.


Miller:

For what it's worth, Immanuel Kant's original objection to the ontological argument might fit in this category. Kant argued that existence is not a property that you can include in the definition of an object.

Meta: that argument is by the modal nature of the nature of the argument. The difference in modality and propositional understanding per se is the addition of the type of being that is discussed (weather contingent or necessary). That status (modal) adds new information and that means in that case existence is a property because the type of existence discussed changes the situation. If necessary I can find a half dozen experts who say this. I don't have the quotes anymore but I have documented this with a huge number of logicians in the past. If you want to take my word for it save us both a lot of time.


Miller:

Alternate definition: The greatest being

Many proponents of ontological arguments like to have it both ways. On the one hand, we are allowed to define God. On the other hand, we are not allowed to define "the unicorn which necessarily exists."

Meta: The greatest begin is not an option. I mean by that not according to a huge portion of Christian thought. Sure the unaware, the uneducated, those not in the know, those who don't read theology, those "not with it" (aka people who disagree with me--I speak tongue in cheek) will say that God is the greatest being; but the Tillichian background from which I am working argues that God is not "a being" at all. God is the ground of being, being itself, not a being. God is the basis upon which all things cohere, not another thing in creation alongside "things." The idea of a supreme being is what I mean when I say atheist are bound up in "thing hood."

Miller:

But to be fair, they're not exactly parallel. In most ontological arguments, God is not defined as "the deity which necessarily exists". Rather, God has a much more specific definition.

Definition: If God exists, then s/he is the greatest being conceivable.
Additional premise: We can conceive of a being as greater by conceiving it as necessarily existing.

Meta: Anselm said "God is that which noting greater than can be conceived." He did not say "the greatest being," although he may have said it somewhere but the famous formation doesn't refer to a being. Tillich's criticism of the OA is that it is aimed at production of proof of "a supreme being." The problem with that is God cannot be "a being" since God is the basis of all being, the ground, being itself. Of course atheists harp upon the "greatest" idea, but that's becuase they don't understand the being itself thing becasue they are too bound up in thing hood to understand the concept. I am not saying atheists are not smart enough to get it or that no atheists do understand it, but by and large they tend not to because it's alien to the way they think.

Miller:

I think that this new definition hurts the ontological argument. 

Meta: So did Paul Tillich, and of course what Tillich thinks I think. ;-)

Miller:

For one thing, we have a whole new premise. I don't have any particular problem with the premise, but it just seems so extraneous and unnecessary. I refuse to argue with the additional premise, because it seems like a tactic to draw attention away from the real flaws of the ontological argument. In my naive optimism, I expected this tactic from conspiracy theorists, not philosophers.

Meta: If I was of a mind to defend the premise of greatest conceivable being you could not get away with just saying that. But since its' antithetical to my theological outlook I am actually in agreement with you to some extent. This this is a good time to point out the importance of reading theology. The Dawkins "theology is stupid I don't have to know about it" is so self defeating. If you know theology you could beat anyone trying to argue this version of the OA but just showing that it's contradicted by some of the major theologians throughout history; in that those who agree that God is being itself disagree that God is "a being" so God can't be "the supreme being" because the "supreme being" is still "a being."

Miller:
And the new definition does not help in the slightest.

Let's say that Russell is the name of "the male barber who shaves all men who do not shave themselves. As I said before, in Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, there are rules against defining Russell. If we are not allowed to define Russell, then obviously, we are also not allowed to define Russell's wife! Russell's wife may not have any self-referential paradoxes, but she requires the existence of Russell, who does have self-referential paradoxes.

Let's say we have a rule against defining necessarily existing beings. Obviously, we are also not allowed to define the wives of any of those beings. We are not allowed to make any definition which implies necessary existence. If we accept the additional premise, then the definition of God implies necessary existence. Therefore we are not allowed to construct the definition of God.

Meta: by the same token not arguing the supreme being thing means this argument doesn't apply to my view.

Bill Walker Please Read my Post for Once

Bill walker is a regular reader and commenting atheist critic of this blog and mainly of Atheist Watch. Apparently he doesn't actually read my posts because I've said things that totally contradict the assertions he makes and that should tell anyone of reasonable intelligence that their view of what I believe is wrong; but he doesn't seem to notice. Here he's at it again:

billwalker said...

Joe, I'm still hoping that you'll take a cosmic view of the Cosmos & of the primitive tribal god our ancestors invented during the early iron age. If you need help on this, it's to be had on ExChristian.net,also Atheist Nexus.Reconciling the dogma of Xianity & science, especially Astronomy, is impossible. When one considers the fact of several hundred BILLION galaxies,each with up to several hundred billions in each of them, ours being one of the smaller ones, & of 13.7 BILLION years in existence, the sheer unlikelihood of 'the creator sending his only offspring to be born of a virgin in the early iron age in a dinky town in the middle east, isn't just astronomically unlikely. It's frigging INSANE. Please open your mind to examining the doctrines of Xianity.

He makes the astoundingly naive assertion that if one was to understand the juxtaposition of modern astronomy with ancient primitive beliefs once could not be a Christian. At this point he would have to assume that all Christians are literatists and too stupid to understand Genesis as metaphor or mythology or to see the big man in the sky of the OT as metaphor. This does nothing but highlight the ignorance and stupidity of not reading theology but pretending to pompously critique it. If he read theology he would know that the vast majority of theologians in the world today (being the more learned end of Christian camp) do not buy Genesis as a literal history of creation.

Not that there's a logical reason why the big man in the sky could not create an unbounded universe. The universe is finite, contrary to Bill's understanding. He, like most atheists who yak at Chrsitians about the wonderfulness of science really knows little about scinece. Universe is finite yet unbounded. NO reason why a guy with a body if he was powerful enough could not or would not create it. Of course the truth of it is most modern theologians (myself included ) do not think God is a big man or has a body. I am sure Bill thinks we do. I took four courses in astronomy in college and I'll wager that's more than Bill took and I will wager I know more about astronomy than he does.

I've said this explicitly a number of times and if Bill was really reading he should get it. I understand that the people who wrote the OT, the collections of writings that make it up (it did not fall out of the sky as one bound volume nor were all the parts of it written by the same guy) were written by primitive people whose understanding is not up to par with ours in terms of science or the cosmos. We all  know this. As many times as I've talked by my view of inspiration he should understand that I do not regard the books of the Bible as "written by God" but as human accounts of divine/human encounters. It's a totally different model than the one he is use to assuming Christians believe. It's a model that allows for mistakes in fact. It's a model that allows for mistakes in scinece and history. It's a model that is not about inerrency.

My assumption is that there is this aspect to all being, it is an aspect that is eternal. Invidious "things" aka "the beings" are temporal, contingent, and temporary. They come into being, the go out of being, they replaced by other temporal, contingent, temporary things. There is an aspect to being that is eternal. It has no beginning and no end, it is not a series of causes, it's not really a "final cause" since you can't really trace it as a series of causes and effects. This aspect is called "being itself" the basis of what being is, the "ground of being." "Ground refers not only  to basis, so its' the basis of 'the beings" or all that exits, but it's also "ground" as in "depth psychology." When Tillich says "Being has depth" he's saying that that there's an aspect of being we only understand subliminally, an aspect that fits into the background, that we don't think about usually and we can't see we can't locate it as a "thing" among other things, but it's always there and it always has been and always will be.

It's that thing we call "God." The primitives in sensing the presence of it try to pin it down and say what it is the attached to it the cultural constructs they understood best. In the world of the bronze age when they wrote the OT works the first draft of J (the J document that was woven together with E,D, and P to form the OT) they filtered this eternal aspect of being through their lens of cultural understanding they linked it the king on his throne because that was the most powerful they knew of, that's what they thought about when they thought of creative power and the force of divine will. Of cousre understanding it as a will at all was an even older construct. So they speak about "the Lord" and they portray him as a man on a throne a king, becuase that's what they thought about when they thought of power. We come along for generation after generation thinking of God in this say, as a king, as "the Lord." We don't realize there are other constructs we have ourselves we can also filter it through. For me one of those constructs is Necessary Being. I use this one becasue I like philosophy and find a helpful distinction the one between necessity/contingency, so I call it "eternal necessary being."

This "being itself" is not "a being" but being, the thing that the act of being is. The basis of the act of being. We can even say that is a construct. But this aspect of being is in all things. It's in the ground, the in the air, it's in us, in me and you, in  each of us. The unwary can become concerned and think its' pantheism, it is not pantheism. Pantheism reduces God to a thing, the force of nature, or the sum total of all things taken together. But God is not a "thing" alongside other things. I call it an "aspect of being" that itself is a construct and might be in danger of reducing God to a thin, if we think of it as one ingredient in making up the universe with other ingredients, it also makes the universe sound like a cake.

I've expressed this before in this blog. I quote a translator form 1923 who describes Dionysus the Areopagine's view of God. I find this is a find description that really sums up what I believe.

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.

At this point I quote myself because I've put this up before:

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.

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)


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.

Do you see now how this view just totally kicks in the head of any idea that I think there's this big man in the sky? In this view God does not have to create by sitting around and saying "I think I will make me a universe." He doesn't even have to be a planner or do any kind of ratiocination. In this view God could be a principle like the dialectic, the laws of physics, the unified field, or even evolution 'itself.' (what else but an "itself?"). But don't go thinking this destroys Christianity or that it is the least bit unorhtodox. Dionysus is at the center of Greek Orthodox world, he's as Orthodox as one can get. Nor does it eliminate the idea of a loving fatherly God who cares about you, the concept itself (see above) include the idea of God as conscious. In  fact it leaves us with the idea of mind as the basis of reality rather than energy or mater. Thus "God" would be the origin of the conscious. the planing and all that seems to connect God to the mind like that of a man can be understood as an instant or a second a nono second requiring no reflection. It is both deterministic and random it's both impersonal and the product of a consciousness. That makes "God" both loving and dispassionate. It also means sense because God transcends all our neat little categories. This is why the atheists can't determine or second guess what God would do. That would require understanding God and God is beyond our understanding.

God is not the man on a throne and the open boundless nature of the universe reflects God's unconditioned nature. While at the same time we can relate to God's love and accurately call God "father." The contingent nature of the universe reflects it's created nature and thus highlights God as the eternal necessary aspect of being.



Source:

Dionysius the Areopagite: on Divine names and the Mystical Theology, trans. Clearance Edwin Rolt , New York, New 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,
[1] Ibid, Introduction, 4-5
[1] Pseudo-Dionysius, On Divine Names, Ibid 52
[1] Ibid, 53
[1] Ibid.