“Si comprehendis, non est deus” (If you comprehend it, it is not God)
Augustine of Hippo
Comments
I'm with Jon Garvey on this one.
T’oma said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you’re going; so how can we know the way?” Yeshua said, “I AM the Way — and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me. Because you have known me, you will also know my Father; from now on, you do know him — in fact, you have seen him.”
-John 14, CJB
Notice that Jesus didn't say he has the truth; he said he is the Truth, and then he equates himself with God! This is totally outrageous . . . unless it's really true.
I don't have faith in a religion, which I define as humanity's unilateral attempts to reconcile themselves with God, or to superstitiously assure myself that my ritualistic actions can somehow win God's approval. Religion nauseates me.
Instead, I trust a very special living person whose Spirit changed my life. Then, why would I want to be "free" from my inner peace and joy, love and assurance, and self-control and understanding?Querius
October 28, 2013
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OT: Frank Turek (re)interviewed Dr. Stephen Meyer on his radio show today:
https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/cross-examined/id337782458#bornagain77
October 26, 2013
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Ah, yes: the 1970s, golden age of atheists running around declaring insightful. This from the guy asserting the truth and relevance of Christ.LarTanner
October 25, 2013
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Or perhaps I heard it all before 4 decades ago in a world where atheists thought they were more insightful than anyone else.Jon Garvey
October 25, 2013
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It has nothing to do with age or wisdom, and the irritation evident in your note suggests a defensive posture.
I am simply asking -- asking, mind you -- to take a serious look at the epistemology of religious faith.
You say you have no more reason to be liberated from faith, etc. Well...if this is so, why are you irritated and defensive? Perhaps you are afraid of having a comfortable view shattered? Perhaps you intuit that the faith will not withstand serious scrutiny?LarTanner
October 25, 2013
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LarTanner
Someday, I may be as old and wise as you.
Currently, and for the last 48 years, I've found no more reason to be liberated from faith than to be liberated from love and hope. Horses for courses.Jon Garvey
October 25, 2013
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I’ve made a personal, not an ideological, commitment to Christ for the very reason that he is true and relevant.
This is precisely an ideological commitment. Calling it personal does not make it less ideological; calling it "Christ" does not hide that it's ideology.
Don't you agree that it is unhealthy and even dangerous to commit oneself to ideology? A cult of Jesus is as odious as a cult of Mao or Hitler or Reagan or Michael Jordan or Bill Gates or whomever. There's no one and no ideology that deserves unquestioning allegiance and that should be free from vigorous challenge. You should not be committing to Christ but rather committing to the reality in which you find yourself.
Maybe you think Jesus, the character in the Christian Scriptures, is admirable. I disagree, as I see his morality as both derivative and questionable, and his personality as unlikable. Someone like the Buddha easily surpasses him as a teacher and intellect. But you think highly of Jesus and so be it.
But there's no need to take anything the person (allegedly) said or meant, and make it into anything other than "a point to consider." There's no need to confer special authority on those texts and priests.
It may be comforting to "just see design" in nature, but I happen to think nature is fine as it is, without need for labels or imported purposes.
This all may come off as preachy, but at the very least now you know there is such a thing as liberation from faith and it's in your power to overcome faith.LarTanner
October 25, 2013
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LarTanner
So you have chosen to make an ideological commitment to “testimony,”
No, I don't think that's what I've done, or what I've said. I've made a personal, not an ideological, commitment to Christ for the very reason that he is true and relevant. And I've accepted the testimony about his Creatorship, because it concurs with the epistemological persuasiveness of the personal relationship I have with Christ through his Spirit.
Subordinate to that ( I grant you), I value very highly all evidence and other methods of reasoning, measurement and verification. And hence, in accordance with faith, education, reasoning and a lifetime's experience of life-and-death judgement calls I assess the case for ID and for evolution according to their merits. I'm just not ideologically committed to them, like I said.
And so I see no bad design in nature that might impugn the wisom and competence of the Creator - I just see design.Jon Garvey
October 25, 2013
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Now me, I’m not committed ideologically to ID, or to evolutionary theory, but primarily to Christ the ????? of God. And part of that faith is accepting the gtestimony that all things were made by, through and for him. So I’m more prepared to critique my own comprehension than the works of God.
So you have chosen to make an ideological commitment to "testimony," as a rather old (by human standards" testimony at that. And you have chosen to commit to the testimony regardless of its truth or relevance. And you have chosen to commit to the testimony above other evidence and other methods of reasoning, measurement, and verification.
Could I humbly suggest that you consider trying to overcome your faith?LarTanner
October 25, 2013
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I see the editor baulks at Greek script. For ????? read "Logos" above.Jon Garvey
October 24, 2013
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Well then maybe the designer isn’t God.
Or maybe our ability to rate natural design is overconfident - therein, as I said above, lies the foolishness of most modern theistic evolution.
Now me, I'm not committed ideologically to ID, or to evolutionary theory, but primarily to Christ the ????? of God. And part of that faith is accepting the gtestimony that all things were made by, through and for him. So I'm more prepared to critique my own comprehension than the works of God.Jon Garvey
October 24, 2013
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Jon,
Well then maybe the designer isn't God.
As to the second part: we already have a solid account for the "designer of the demiurge": human invention.LarTanner
October 24, 2013
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Lar Tanner
As the OP said, if you can comprehend that the designer has limited powers, it isn't God.
So you then have to account for the designer of the demiurge, and why the former was let loose on ythe universe.Jon Garvey
October 24, 2013
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It’s what endangers ID by a similar process – “I am sure this is bad design, therefore I am sure that God is a designer with limited powers – because, you know, he’s just a comprehensible engineer when all is said and done.”
ID does not claim that God is the designer. In fact, ID has nothing at all to say about the ID other than that ID is the correct explanation for the origin of X.
Since the ID may or may not be "God," the ID could very well have limited powers.LarTanner
October 24, 2013
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The bible is not the sole path to heaven, nor any church. Nor both. God is free to show his infinite love for each person in any way He wishes. Jesus would have accepted his Passion for them, if they were to be the sole beneficiary.
The Bible is not the sole path to heaven, in that the Bible is clear that many of the people described in the Bible, who lived before the Bible was completed, were righteous in God's sight and were accepted in heaven.
However, the Bible is clear that Jesus is the sole path to Heaven, and that it is through Jesus that the ancients received salvation. Jesus is the entirety of God's love; there is no way to accept God's love without Jesus. Those who reject Jesus cannot find a way to salvation without him.
(with the caveat that accept/reject is more than a matter of words and involves action; is it possible to reject in words and accept in deeds? God will be the Judge)SirHamster
October 24, 2013
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I think it is sad that some denominations do not understand that the bible cannot be read as a simple handbook for a car or a domestic appliance, but is full of mystery; and why would it not be, since it is God, himself, speaking to the reader directly.
Much of what we understand today was teased out of the scriptures by holy men and women down the centuries, wasn't it?
The bible is not the sole path to heaven, nor any church. Nor both. God is free to show his infinite love for each person in any way He wishes. Jesus would have accepted his Passion for them, if they were to be the sole beneficiary.
Even the word, 'faith', has many interesting and valid connotations, other than mere credence. Mysteries, mysteries, mysteries. And yet, as with science, although more so, our knowledge of God increases all the time, accepting and using the paradoxes and mysteries we encounter, as springboards to increase our understanding and further our progress in the spirit.Axel
October 24, 2013
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Bruce - caution.
(a)It was the deceptive nature of regarding images of man or beast, instead of seeking knowledge from God himself, that Paul refers to as the root of evil in Romans 1.21ff. That is also why God forbade the makling of images.
(b)That said, the imageness of man is what makes mankind a creature to be held as sacred. But;
(c> It isn't that straightforward to seek to know God by investigating man, for "The heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure - who can understand it?" In other words, since man is polluted by sin, transferring human attributes to God is likely to result in perverted knowledge of God.
(d) In any case, as I said before, knowledge is not comprehension - I can learn truth about Abe Lincoln from his sculpture, but I can't claim exhaustive knowledge. Especially if the damn thing's broken.Jon Garvey
October 24, 2013
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And yet, we are made "in His image and likeness". Thus, the more we know ourselves---Who and What we truly are---the more we know God.Bruce David
October 24, 2013
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What Jon Garvey said. :-)Barry Arrington
October 24, 2013
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To know is not to comprehend.
To conceive is not to comprehend.
I can know Einstein - and maybe benefit inestimably from his friendship - but not comprehend his intellect.
I can conceive of quantum mechanics - but not comprehend it.
Anselm is not pitted against Augustine. He writes to clarify the thought Eric quotes:
"For nothing prohibits the word "ineffable" being said, though that which is called ineffable cannot be spoken of. And the phrase "not thinkable" can be thought, although that object to which the phrase "not thinkable" refers cannot be thought. Thus when the phrase "than which nothing greater can be thought" is spoken, what is heard can undoubtedly be heard and understood, even if the object, than which a greater cannot be thought, cannot be thought or understood."
And so John 17.3 is not incompatible with Romans 11: "How unsearchable his judgements, and his paths past tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor?"
Anselm and Augustine, Jesus and Paul are all opposed, rather, to that new kid on the block, theistic personalism, that makes God just one example of the category "person", another one of the guys - usually, an all-American boy. The blind arrogance of it!
That's what has made theistic evolution a morass of second-guessing that God "wouldn't" create stuff like wisdom teeth or viruses (we comprehend him fully, after all), and ergo "free" evolution did it.
It's what endangers ID by a similar process - "I am sure this is bad design, therefore I am sure that God is a designer with limited powers - because, you know, he's just a comprehensible engineer when all is said and done."
It's the old Renaissance and Enlightenment project of bringing God down to our level whilst hauling ourselves up to heaven on our own bootstraps. Give me Augustine and Anselm any day - as I rejoice in the knowledge of God that comes through the gospel and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and simulatenously quake at the depths of his being.Jon Garvey
October 24, 2013
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It used to be: “God is that of which nothing greater can be conceived” (Anselm).
Now we have: “God is that which is greater than can be conceived”.
Which is it?
There's no contradiction. God is the ultimate...there is nothing greater than Him, which is why we, with our finite knowledge, are unable to fully understand/comprehend His greatness. If something were greater than GOD, then he/it would be GOD. That's why God is supreme.Blue_Savannah
October 24, 2013
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It used to be: "God is that of which nothing greater can be conceived" (Anselm).
Now we have: "God is that which is greater than can be conceived".
Which is it?Ian Thompson
October 23, 2013
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Love that quote! Our GOD is not a man-made GOD, for if He were, we would fully understand Him and thus would not be much of a GOD. Our GOD is amazing and far beyond our limited human intellect. The fact He has revealed Himself to us and given us a taste of things to come through our Lord Jesus Christ, only shows how great is His love for us!Blue_Savannah
October 23, 2013
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"And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."
John 17:3
Oops. Sorry Augustine. :)Eric Anderson