Clete said:
Very well, I will over look the hypocrisy implicit in this post and assume once again that somehow I am (seemingly continually) the one who misunderstood you and not the other way around and will give you yet another chance to rescue yourself from the dark recesses of total irrationality.
Thank you.
Clete said:
There are a couple of things here. First of all I would like for you to establish that logic was created or is part of the creation, however you want to put it. On what day was logic created?
Logic was created in the first three days, where God makes space for life; space is the grounding for the Created order; God makes light (and orders that light in day and night, where greater lights reign in the day and lesser lights in the night); light is the realm of the heavenly bodies (things that had life in the ancient world); God created the air and the seas which God fills with birds and sea creatures; God makes the land and inhabits the land with animals and human beings. Logic is the grounding space in which the Creation which is other than God is able to respond to God's Creation (which culminates in rest and worship on the
Shabat of the seventh day.
Without space there is no logic (for there is nothing other than God without space; there is chaos and darkness that "reigns," which can only be defined in the presence of God's Spirit which is wind and breath and life). Logic is the grounding for how we realate to God, and since we have a beginning (a head), there is no logic before the Creation. Once God makes space for the other, that is when logic is produced (when things can begin to relate to one another and to God). Of course, once again, logic is not a universal for me, so in this context it is the very form which the Creation takes. Animals have a logic that governs them as do humans (in their will), while the Creation as a whole is governed by the logic of God's will. Logic is a multiplicity in the scriptures that united only in love (God's will and Jesus' will are not the same; our will is not absorbed into God's will when we submit to God; we remain distinct from God, and love allows the wills to be brought into harmony, the logics to be brought into peace with one another
Clete said:
Second, I do not put either revelation or logic "first". You seem to think that I do, and you couldn't be further from the truth. That would sort of be like putting justice before love or love before righteousness. It makes no sense, they are essencially the same thing.
You see, I do see an order between justice and love. God's love precedes justice (for it is love that produces justice not vice versa). God is equated to love within the scriptures, not to justice. So God's Son is sent before the rectification (
dikaiosyne) of the world. God's love produces a space for life (justice). Justice is contingent upon love, not vice versa. So before the Christian is concerned about
dikaiosyne he or she is much more concerned with love (for love must come first, and only within that grounding can justice be produced). In a very real way the disciple of Christ is the grounding for justice in this world only in as much as the disciple is grounded in love (that is love for God first and love for the neighbor). Love is grounded ontologically in itself (for God is love); justice is grounded contingently in that love, so that what is justice is grounded in love (what is rectified is contingent upon the love of God). We become God's righteousness as we submit ourselves to God's love (just as Christ is the
dikaiosyne of God.
Agape and
dikaiosyne are not the same in the scriptures. One is an initial action entirely grounded in God the Creator, the other is how humans are called to respond to that love (even as love begins to define them).
Clete said:
You see it is important that you understand that I DO NOT believe that everything that can be known can begin found out by simply the use of logic, that is not my belief at all! On the contrary! There is much that is way past our ever finding out without God revealing to us. But, (and this is the critical point) God's revelation, if it is true (which of course it will be), must be logical.
When you say that God is the source of revelation, I don't doubt that this is very much your understanding of the world (no Christian could deny it). But when you go on to submit revelation to logic, you have succeeded in subverting it to the unified logic that has been envisioned by humanity in our Modern age (Logic as a singular and "rational" approach to the world is a Modern ideal, it is not a biblical one). The work of the Spirit (revelation) is hardly singular or unified in itself (like the Muslims would have us believe). It is expressed in a plethora of gatherings of people, who understand the world in very different ways, and yet are unified in Christ (the revelation is always incarnate, united to the contingencies of those to whom it comes; and if it is to be carried on, it cannot be divorced from those contingencies for we only know God as incarnate, not in God's invisibility; the Spirit is known by the fruit it produces, not within itself). Even within the canon of the scriptures you find this clash of logic (the worldview of the ancients is not the same worldview held by the writers of the New Testament, and certainly neither one of them is anything like our Modern understanding of the world around us. Logics and rationalities change throughout time, for that is the nature of humanity, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Empires rise up for a time in their greatness, and are destined to wane once again, fading into the dust of history. Our mortality constantly reminds us that we are mortal and even dependant upon God for continued life; we are not eternal but contingent beings on this planet.
Clete said:
It will be logical for two related reasons: First, because God is logical and, in fact, is the very source of logic and reason, and second, because that which is true is logical by definition.
What does it mean for God to be logical? Are you going to subject God to a set of rules and limits that make God finite? Logic requires finitude in order for it to work (there have to be limits in order for us to approach the world in a rational manner; closed systems are the joys of science, and the headache of science and the scientific method and rational approaches are multiple variants that cannot be controlled). So to talk about God as logical is to set limits about God. Even though you do not define those limits they are still very much there; and by using the term logical you set those limits not only around God but around the Creation as well (uniting both God and the Creation within the same limits). God is not a finite being. God is eternal and God is Spirit (Spirit being by definition a lack of boundaries that are well defined in the flesh).
Truth is not defined by logic; truth is defined by life and by breath and by the Spirit; God is truth, not logical assertions.
Clete said:
The second reason comes as a result of the first. That is, the fact that truth is logical is because God, who is logical, is truth.
God is truth! That is the posit that is given to us in the scriptures. It is not qualified by anything else. Whether God is logical or not, God is truth (for all of reality consists in God).
You make an assumption that I am not willing to agree with. You define God as logical, and that is a statement I have yet to comprehend let alone conceed. What does it mean for us to define God by God's limits? It only assumes that we have seen the world around us and thought that this world is just as real as God, in itself, and we have conceived of another manifestation of God that we must protect ourselves from. The God of nominalist theology (the omni-God) is a God who seems to be able to go either way, for we assume that goodness and evil are equally based in their own ontologies (and that power is a neutral reality that can be used for either good or for evil). We define evil within itself, so that evil takes on a substance of its own, then we project this onto God.
The problem is that our ontology is messed up so that it also messes up our view of God. Evil has no ontology (it has no reality). The only way in which evil gains substance is parasitically through the Creation. Evil is the lacking of good, it is not the opposite (anymore than 0 is the opposite of infinity; the opposite of infinity is negative infinity). And as soon as we give evil an ontology, we submit ourselves to a view of the world that is not Christian. There is a reason why eastern values are becoming so popular among the people of the west, because this ontological breakdown has led us to affirm the reality of evil as much as we affirm the reality of good, and in fact, we have shed all values, so that evil and good become a subjective matter that is really only a reflection of one's own values.
To define God as logical for me is as absurd as defining God as "non-contradictory." We define God by the Creation, rather than seeing that the opposite must be true; we only have reality in as much as we are grounded in God, and when we cease to be grounded in God we cease to have reality (we are corrupted; we die; we are destroyed). Sin is not the opposite of the good; sin is the absence of it.
So I do not want to talk about God as "logical." God is God; anything is a lie. God is self-defined (not defined by limits we try to tease out of God).
Clete said:
In fact the Bible uses logic as a title or name of God. Just as God is love and God is righteousness, God is also logic. He is the very definition; the absolute personification of logic (John 1:1). If this were not so then we could not be logic in the first place any more than there would be absolute right and wrong if God were not righteous. In fact, "right and wrong" is merely the moral application of "truth and error" (i.e. logic).
Once again, you fail to see why I detest your exegisis of John. When John speaks of
logos, it is not a universal and singular logical framework for the world and for God;
logos is Jesus of Nazareth who proceeds from the Father in the incarnation within Mary's womb, who walks and talks with his disciples on the earth, who is killed and who is raised, who ascended to the Father and who will come again.
Logos is forever incarnate (made flesh) for us. It is never to be abstracted into logic, for logic by definition cannot face the world in an incarnate matter, but must always abstract the world into simplified truths that easy to manipulate and to handle.
Peace,
Michael
SS, this is one of my big problems with the settled view. Couldn't resist the oppurtunity to jump in. Do I make sense here, or am I missing something?