St Augustine's Correlation: God, Truth, Being itself

Botticelli's concept of St. Augustine

…St. Augustine’s view that God is being itself is based partly upon Platonism (“God is that which truly is” and partly on the Bible—“I am that I am”). The transcendence of time as a condition of full reality is a central theme…[in Augustine’s work].[1]

Of course Augustine was one of the seminal thinkers of all Church history. Along with Aquinas he’s probably one of the two most important theologians of all time. He might be called the last thinker in the tradition of the classical age. His view of the Trinity cemented the Orthodox position and set the Western view of Trinity on it’s trajectory diverging from the eastern Church. His work The City of God is one of the greatest theological master pieces of all time, and to think it’s a letter to friend (a letter the size of the New York Phone book).

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.

Augustine looked to the same passage in Exodus that Gilson quotes in connection with Aquinas. Augustine’s conclusions are much the same about that phrase “I am that I am.” This is one of his key reasons for his identification between God and truth. He saw the nature of God’s timeless being as a key also to identifying God with truth. The link between God and truth is the Platonic “one.” Augustine puts the forms in the mind of God, so God becomes the forms really. The basis of this identification is based partly upon God’s eternal nature. From that point on it’s all an easy identification between eternal verities, such as truth, eternal being, beauty, the one, and God. The other half of the equation is God’s revelation of himself as eternal and necessary through the phrase, for very similar reasons to those listed already by Gilson, between I am that I am and being itself (or in Augustine’s case the transcended of being). “He answers, disclosing himself to creature as Creator, as God to man, as Immortal to mortal, eternal to a thing of time he answers ‘I am who I am.’”[5]

From Psalm 101:25 he ponders the phrase “generation of generations” rather than the choice of saying your years is endless.” He concludes that this Psalm is not merely saying God is living through a parade of endless years but that God is timeless. He concludes that the generation of generations is a timeless generation. He concludes that God’s years are his substance, they cannot be separated from God himself (as we see ‘substance” can be a way of saying “being). “God’s years are God’s eternity, his eternity is God’s very substance.” Thus God is not only eternal but his being his essence coincide, his eternal nature is the same as his being. Thus God is eternal necessary being.[6]

---

[1] Reality: Readings in Phlosophy. Indianapolis, Indiana:Hackett Pulbishing company, inc. Carl Avren Levenson, John Westphal, editors, 1994, 54

[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

[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.

[5] Levenson and Westphal, Ibid. translated by Edmond Hill

[6] Ibid, trans in Enarrationes in Psalm. 101

Challenegeto astheists> Jesus existed as a man in hisotry, Says Pete Kirby

Tomb of Philip at Hierapolis

Fun filled Friday: debating atheists what could be more fun? The topic: Jesus existed as a man in history

The Jesus mythers use phony standard of proof real historians don't use. Historicity was given to Pilate for having only two mention's, outsides the Bible, We have ore than two sources making the connection to Jesus.

Jesus has two mentions in different passages by Josephus, Here I link to an article I wrote about Peter Kirby's straw man argument making the evidence from Jo look weak. I show the case is very strong,


http://religiousapriorijesus-bible.blogspot.com/2016/05/peter-kirbys-straw-man-arguments-joephus.html


Kirby's straw man Talmud: Good evidence for Jesus in the Talmud

http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2016/04/peter-kirbys-straw-man-best-case-for.html




Papias and The Daughters of Philip, and polycarp


http://religiousapriorijesus-bible.blogspot.com/2010/05/philip.html
 Papias had several important connections to the history of Jesus. He studied with his friend Polycarp and they both studied under the Apostle John. There is a controservy about weather it was the Apostel John or another John, I will deal with that on Papias own page. He lived in Hierapolis where he was Bishop there was also Philip and his four virgin daughters. The daughters of Philip were prophetesses, Paul is said to have met them in Acts (8:5-40; 21:8-9. ), and Papias is said to have met them as well. Eusebius speaks of this in the same passage that he speaks about Papias:

The residence of the Apostle Philip with his daughters in Hierapolis has been mentioned above. We must now point out how Papias, who lived at the same time, relates that he had received a wonderful narrative from the daughters of Philip. For he relates that a dead man was raised to life in his day. He also mentions another miracle relating to Justus, surnamed Barsabas, how he swallowed a deadly poison, and received no harm, on account of the grace of the Lord.[6]

Polycrates testifies (AD 190) to existence of these daughters and their burial and their father's burial at Hierapolis, "Philip of the twelve apostles who sleeps in Hierapolis and his two druthers, elderly virgins, and another of his daughters who after living in the Holy Spirit rests in Ephesos."[7] William Tabbernee documents an inscription from Hierapolis honoring a public figure which links the burial of Philip the apostle with the monument in his honor, the "martyrium." It refers to him as "the glorious Apostle and Theologian Philip.[8]  Of course there are problematic details in these accounts. Other accounts give four daughters, Polycrates seems to only know of there. There is a controversy as weather or not this Philip is the evangelist of Acts (one of the first decons) or the Apostles, one of the twelve who traveld with Jesus. No one really knows. In a famous debate between a Montanist (Prokolos) and an Orthox (Gaius) reference is made to the four daughters of Philip as having resided in that area and being burried there.[9] There is a possiblity that the tomb of Philip has been discovered:

 
Apologetics, Bible, historical Jesus, Polycarp Papias, Josephus., Talmud

Does God's Trnascendent Nature Prevent Us From Understanding Anything AT All About God?

Gustov Dore's "Celestial Rose" from his great
illustrations Donte's Divine Comedy



this post is from 2012 people keep reading it so...


On the blog article I wrote: "demand for evidence of God unfair and misplaced"
the blog piece itself.

StewPiD MoNkEy had some questions for the comment section:

StEwPiD_MoNkEy said...

Metacroc,
Hello again. Had to have a name change due to copy right laws. But any way, there is a slight problem with your logic. You say, "God is beyond our understanding." In the third paragraph yet later you go on to say, "God wants the search". Which one is it? Since you are bringing up epistemology, this question is directly towards the subject. If your God is "beyond you understanding", then how can u state what he/it wants? The whole concept of being in gods mind directly states that he is non material (how you get to a mind that does not have a brain based in matter is another story). Since by your standards he is non material there is no seperating what he is from that he is. If one aspect of your God is unknowable, then all aspects are unknowable. So to claim to know anything about your God, i. e. He wants u to search, is to claim knowledge of the unknowable. This negates its unknowable status. If its known then your God should be quantifiable. How do you reconcile this glaring contradiction?

Let's break it down:

"God is beyond our understanding." In the third paragraph yet later you go on to say, "God wants the search". Which one is it?

Both. God does not ask us to understand him, he asks us to seek and find him. What we are finding is a personal relationship with the source of our being and our place in being. We can know experimentally things we don't understand intellectually. I don't know that much about how a tv works, how my computer works, even how the lights work, other than the average amount of surface knowledge that most people possess. Yet I use all of these things. In terms of relationship I know and like or love various people who do I don't understand psychologically. Of cousre there is a certain degree of understanding that comes from experiencing the reality of a person or of God. In terms of God experience that is called the "noetic quality" of religious experience. That's not really what is being talked about when we say God is beyond our understanding. noetic qualtiies are part of the sense of hte numinous which is basic aspect of religious experience. That's the sense people get that the experience of the divine imparts some of kind of knowledge. It's not scientific or intellectual knowledge. The sort of thing one gains from the noetic aspects of religoius experience is the intuitive sense that life has meaning and that God loves us.

StEwPiD_MoNkEy said...

Since you are bringing up epistemology, this question is directly towards the subject. If your God is "beyond you understanding", then how can u state what he/it wants?

He can tell us. The noetic qulaities also impart a degree of knowledge of this sort. We know form the sense of love that comes with the sense of the numinous that God wants to have a love relationship with us. In addition to this, in the Christian tradition, we believe that Jesus was modeling God's character for us and Jesus tells us this.

StEwPiD_MoNkEy said...

The whole concept of being in gods mind directly states that he is non material (how you get to a mind that does not have a brain based in matter is another story).

Not necessarily. I have things in my mind and I'm material. Yet I accept that God is not material. In fact I suggest that the divide bewteen material and spiritual is illusory. In my view, taking my ques form German philosophers, spirit is mind. In fact while most people focus on the definition of the Greek term for spirit, pnuma, as "wind" or "breath" most overlook the fact that "mind" is also part of the definition. In fact matter breaks down as well. Matter is energy, and mind is energy. There may be a point at which the two meet. We don't really know what energy is. If you look at the things science says about it, energy is made up of sub atomic particles. What are particles? They are not little balls like the models of atoms suggest, they are "charges." So atoms and subatomic particls are made up of little bitty atoms, so to speak. They are all charges and those charges are made up of more charges. If we ask "what is a charge" the answer really in literal is "more charges." Matter is just a different form of energy and it's not all that clear what energy is. If reductinoists are right and mind is just an organized matrix of electrical charge than it seems that mind and energy are really pretty much the same substance. That suggests that matter and spirit meet at a certain conjunction.


StEwPiD_MoNkEy said...

Since by your standards he is non material there is no seperating what he is from that he is.

That's a tautological statement and it's true of everything.

StEwPiD_MoNkEy said...

If one aspect of your God is unknowable, then all aspects are unknowable.

Conclusion not in evidence. It's also contradicted by any number of empirical instances. For example if I don't know what the submerge part of an ice berg holds that doesn't mean that I don't understand the part that's above water. If I don't know what caused the big bang that doesn't mean I don't undersatnd certain aspects of the expansion. If I don't know some details of a friend's past I can still have a basic understanding of that friend's psychological make up.

StEwPiD_MoNkEy said...

So to claim to know anything about your God, i. e. He wants u to search, is to claim knowledge of the unknowable. This negates its unknowable status. If its known then your God should be quantifiable. How do you reconcile this glaring contradiction?

At this point you are just making a pedantic error. Once its' been explained to you the different senses in which the terms are used (such as "to know" fore example) it should be clear two different senses are involved. The Eastern Orthodox chruch makes the distinction between the unknowable nature of God through conventional means, and the personal or spiritual recourse to experiential knowledge of God. This distinction is preserved in apaphatic theology, the practice of only say what God is not, and that of mystical union where one understands through experience but speaks metahoricallly about it.

Eastern Orthodox Church. Timothy Ware wrote a fine book, The Orthodox Church that does a good job of introducing Western Christians to the Eastern Church.[1]

Ware explains the great schism and how the gulf between east and west continued to grow. He wants to explain the ways in which the east contributed to the gulf. He says that nothing was so radical as the scholastic “revolution” but he lists as the eastern counterpart the Hesychast controversy (pg2). 14^th century Byzantium. This involved God’s nature and the method of prayer. To explain the controversy he goes back to history of eastern mystical theology, back to Clement of Alexandria (early third century) and Origen (mid 3d). The Cappadocians, especially Gregory of Nyssa and also Evagrius, a monk in the Egyptian desert (d399) developed the ideas of Clement and Origen. This entire tradition depended upon an apophatic approach, especially as developed by Clement and Gregory. God is beyond our understanding. We cannot speak accurately about God because we can’t understand God and we don’t know if our experiences of God are so very encompassing or just fragmentary. Therefore, the mystics of the Eastern Church use negative language of God rather than positive. That is to say they concern themselves with what God is not, rather than what God is.[i2] (63)

“The true knowledge and vision of God consists in this—in seeing that he is invisible, because what we seek lies beyond all knowledge, being wholly separated by the darkness of incomprehensibility.” –Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, 11, 163 (377A).

The Height of Negative theology is reached in the works of Dionysius the Areopagite. (unknown writer lived in Syria toward the end of the fifth century). Saint Maximus the Confessor (662) compassed a commentary on these writings and assured their place in the Eastern Church. [3]

He is also an influence on the west, as Ware points out, as Aquinas quotes him heavily in Summa Theologica. The concept of God as Being itself is ratified by Vatican II and is a major premise of modern Catholic doctrine.[4]

---

[1] Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, New York: Penguin books, 1963 (1993 edition).

[2] Ibid. 63

[3] Ibid. quotes John of Damascus from On the Orthodox Faith 1,4 (P.G. Xciv, 800b

[4] Jean-Luc Marion, God without Being. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, Thomas A. Carlson Trans. 1991 (original language publication 1982). xxii.

Fine tuning The Fine Tuning Argument

This is the best argument I've seen against fine tuning argument (FTA) the idea that God fine tuned the universe for life as evidenced by the huge improbability of life making it. The argume nt was made by a feriend who comkents on this blog, Eric Sotnak , in the comment section On Secular Outpost.[1] This argument, together with the newly discovered probable life bearing planets means potential defeat for FTA.

Eric Sotnak :

(1) If God wanted a universe that was finely tuned for life, we would expect him to bring it about in a manner (a) that would be efficient with respect to the desired outcome, and (b) that was causally guaranteed to bring about the desired outcome.

(2) The physical and temporal scale of the universe and the long line of causal requisites that our best science shows to have preceded the arising of life in the universe are extremely inefficient with respect to the desired outcome. (not-a)

(3) The quantum physical nature of universe (especially in its early stages) does not causally guarantee the desired outcome. (not-b)

(4) Therefore, it is not the case that God wanted a universe that was finely tuned for life.

Metacrock:

Using the inefficiency argument to make a reverse design argument has a lot more problems than you realize. The argumemt turns upon second guessing God both in nature and motivations. That never works.”

Erick:

The problem is that it doesn't work for the FT argument, either. Copernicus was smitten by the idea that all the planets were arranged so that their orbits corresponded to nested Pythagorean polyhedra. Such an arrangement, surely, testified to the glory of God. This is the same idea we find in the FTA. When better science falsified the nested polyhedra hypothesis, it's fair to say that no one said, “rats – so much for God, then.” Instead, the elegance and economy of the Keplarian model became the wondrous proof of God's wisdom and the manner by which his hand could be seen at work in nature. If you're going to say, “this is evidence of God” no matter what you find, then it really isn't evidence of God anymore. If God's motives are so inscrutable that we cannot reasonably guess at them, then we can no longer take any observations as evidence that there must be a divine motive behind them.

Keith Parsons:

Suppose that some of the physical constants had been found to be apparently incompatible with the development of complex life. Theists would trumpet this as proof positive that God had miraculously brought about such life despite the hostile physical conditions. Instead, we find that we live in a "Goldilocks" universe where the constants are juuuuust right. Theists cite this as knock-down evidence for God. Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.

Essentially the argument is that design arguments try to have it both ways, either the universe appears specially set up for life or aspects that seem to be hostel to life are overcome and that also is proof, So it's proof either way which means there's no way to tell. If everything counts for your hypothesis nothing can prove it because nothing could count against it, it's not proof. It's true that the conventional design argument has this problem. In other words we don't have a designed universe universe to compare, so the kind of argument that says "the earth is just the right distance from the sun so that looks like design" is fallacious,. We don't know what undersigned looks like.

The FTA has it over that conventional design argument because it has something to compare. We can compare the target levels to all that is not the target level. The problem is apologists screw it up by going back to the conventional kind of design argument and trying to argue both at the same time. FTA works for one reason and in one way: the more improbable it is that life would have made it the more it like a fix it is. We can't marvel at earth being at just the right place but we can marvel that there so many odds against life and yet there is life. We should forget Paley and forget the conventional design argument. don't say it looks designed, Just say too many chances against it to assume no fix.

What about Erick's argument about the scale and time frame, big universe existing for a long time before little bitty life, equals no sign of God? First we do not know that there hasn't  been life for a long time, or that there is another earth-like planet with intelligent beings dealing with God in there own way. That doesn't have happen that much to make the point. The answer I tried to give above that he's taking on assumptions about the nature of God and God's motives. he says: "If God's motives are so inscrutable that we cannot reasonably guess at them, then we can no longer take any observations as evidence that there must be a divine motive behind them."

we don't have to know the motives we don't have to know the game plan to know the fix is in. Besides who says we don't know the motives I didn't s say God has not told us his motives. I said he doesn't know them.

Moreover, his argument is doing the same thing the conventional argument is doing.  That is to say his argument about scales of time and distance is making the same mistake Parson's talks about of asserting comparison between designed and undersigned when we have no basis for comparison.

One final problem. The argument that everything can't count for design combined with the number of  probable life bearing planets newly discovered really creates problems for the argument. [2]

As if there wasn't enough excitement swirling around the discovery of apotentially habitable planet circling the star Gliese 581 just 20 light years away, one of the scientists behind yesterday's announcement upped the ante during a press briefing yesterday afternoon, declaring "my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent." [3]

Does this mean the end of the FTA? First of all any potential for life bearing other than earth will be seen as a defeat by many atheist because they assume any potential is the seed of evolution that could produce s universe teaming with life. But the problem is you might as well say earth itself is that seed. It's not logical to assume that nay potential is automatically a universe taming with life. The odds are still vastly against it. Secondly even if we know for sure of life on  several other planets that would not  that would not change the odds enough. We have to know the hit rate, It may be a judgment call as to what moves the marker from rare to common place, But it has to be more a handful.

Observations:

 

(1) FTA is still better argument than conventional design, don't argue conventional design!

(2) We don't have to know everything to know the fix is in

(3) have to know the hit rate per planet for life to survival before we assume there's no fix.

(4) argue abductively: best explanation

 

Sources

[1] Eric Sotnak, , comment to post by Bradly Bowen, "Adamson’s Cru[de] Arguments for God – Part 4," Secular OutpostMay 4, 2016, blog URL

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/05/04/adamsons-crude-arguments-for-god-part-4/#disqus_thread

 

[2] Dennis Overbye, "Far Off Planets Like Earth Dot the Galaxy," space and Cosmos, NY Times. Nov 4, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/cosmic-census-finds-billions-of-planets-that-could-be-like-earth.html?_r=0 

 

[3] Clay Dilloow, "Odds of Alien Life on Newly Discovered Exoplanet 100%" Popular Science, September 30, 2010, onlime resource URL

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-09/researcher-says-chances-life-newly-discovered-exoplanet-100-percent accessed 5/16/16

 addendum

Recent discoveries have indicated that there are thousands of earth-like planets out there. The Keck observatory observe (Nov. 3, 2013) “What this means is, when you look up at the thousands of stars in the night sky, the nearest sun-like star with an Earth-size planet in its habitable zone is probably only 12 light years away and can be seen with the naked eye. That is amazing," said UC Berkeley graduate student Erik Petigura, who led the analysis of the Kepler and Keck Observatory data.”ⁱ

That sounds like a real disproof of the fine tuning argument. Life bearing planets are so plentiful they orbit every fifth star. That’s not exactly true. The study says Earth “size” planet. That doesn’t necessarily translate into life-bearing: The team, which also included planet hunter Geoffrey Marcy, UC Berkeley professor of astronomy, cautioned that Earth-size planets in Earth-size orbits are not necessarily hospitable to life, even if they orbit in the habitable zone of a star where the temperature is not too hot and not too cold.

"Some may have thick atmospheres, making it so hot at the surface that DNA-like molecules would not survive. Others may have rocky surfaces that could harbor liquid water suitable for living organisms," Marcy said. "We don't know what range of planet types and their environments are suitable for life."ⁱⁱ

i Keck Observatory representative, “odds are on oodles of Earths,” published by Jet Propulsion Libratory, California Insitute of Technology for NASA on “Earth Quest.” Wesbite. Nov 4, 2013.

http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/news/139 accessed 11/8/ 2013.

ii Ibid.