Entries in Life

The modernist will say that logically only one may be true for they each exclude the other. Then he'll go on to say that there is no God, only psychology.

Then Postmodernism comes in and tussles the hair of the dowdy old modernist with the bow-tie and says that perspective creates fact. He'll go on to say that God exists, the gods exist, and both exist in their mutually exclusive thought cosmos as a powerful metaphor.

Then they'll argue.

God is not a provable reality. We can offer an apology for the existence of God. We can point to things which we believe demonstrate His existence. We can witness to our faith. But we cannot prove His existence. God isn't an object subject to the scrutiny of factual observation and experimentation. We can't dissect Him. He's not limited to the merely factual. And since Christ says, "I am the Truth," and Christ is also the 2nd Person of the Triune God, then Truth about God is not limited to factual or logical coherence. Paradox is one of the primary means of expressing something about this Truth. Here... I used this recently elsewhere, but it fits here, too:

While on the Cross He quickened the dead,
so while a Babe He was fashioning babes.
While He was slain, He opened the graves;
while He was in the womb, He opened wombs.

–from Hymns on the Nativity

Me? There is a God. He Is. And He is Truth. The old gods have receded into fairy tales and have lost their vitality. What vitality they had, I believe probably was only what was in the heart and mind of man. They were never more than shadows -- even if demonic, still no more than shadows. But our God says, "I Am." And I believe it. Truly I do. But that's not a fact statement about a provable or disprovable phenomenon, it has only a very tenuous relationship -- if any at all -- with logic.

So far I don't think I've done anything but repeat myself -- sorry for that, my brain seems stuck. Moving on.

Is spiritual truth coherent and not self-contradictory or permitting of externally competing and contradictory truths? Yes. There are positive statements that we can make about God, as witnessed by the Nicene Creed. And to contradict them is to come in conflict with orthodox teaching and, indeed, what we know of the Truth. The problem comes when we take this and fly with it and let it stimulate our thinking and not our hearts.

The Church Fathers talk about the nous the intellective faculty, the heart. It is contrasted with the dianoia, the reason. The glossary at the end of the volumes of The Philokalia says that the nous "does not function by formulating abstract concepts and then arguing on this basis to a conclusion reached through deductive reasoning," -- this is what the dianoia does -- "but it understands divine truth by means of immediate experience, intuition, or 'simple cognition'."

True spiritual knowledge goes beyond positive statements into wonder, into communion with God. The truths of dogma cease to be useful if we build a hedge which limits them to an intellectual meaning, a set of arguments. St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote that, "concepts create images of God, wonder alone grasps something." So long as we are stuck in thinking and arguing about whether or not the OT is factually true we are neglecting the real purpose of the scriptures, which is the revelation of God to man. So long as we limit ourselves to logical argumentation we miss the calling to pray without ceasing.

This is why I would argue that a "history as event" reading of the OT is at best a foray into a secondary significance, or at worst a distortion of the revelatory message.

  Subjective \Sub*jec"tive\, a. [L. subjectivus: cf. F.
     subjectif.]
     1. Of or pertaining to a subject.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Especially, pertaining to, or derived from, one's own
        consciousness, in distinction from external observation;
        ralating to the mind, or intellectual world, in
        distinction from the outward or material excessively
        occupied with, or brooding over, one's own internal
        states.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     Note: In the philosophy of the mind, subjective denotes what
           is to be referred to the thinking subject, the ego;
           objective, what belongs to the object of thought, the
           non-ego. See Objective, a., 2. --Sir W. Hamilton.
           [1913 Webster]
  
     3. (Lit. & Art) Modified by, or making prominent, the
        individuality of a writer or an artist; as, a subjective
        drama or painting; a subjective writer.
        [1913 Webster]

Subjective as opposed to objective -- God is not an object to be studied with detached rationalism, but through relationship. As in 1 Peter 3:7:

Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.

The word "understanding" here is gnosis, knowledge from experience.

Sorry for not going into a detailed explanation, but I must get to bed. More tomorrow, perhaps.

jeremystein wrote:

I'm still unclear on how you decide which parts of the Bible are Truth. Is prophecy Truth?

Personally I think -- and believe that the Church attests to this -- that all of the Bible is true, as spellbound points out, ...not because Scripture is 100% factually verifiable...But because Scripture, so the Church hs taught and held from the beginning, is 100% inspired by God and therefore reliable. And he goes on writing:

But what is it reliable for? The end of John's gospel says these things are written so that you might believe and that in believing you might have eternal life. St Paul writes to Timothy that Scripture is profitable for many things. And while it is true that Scripture is historically valuable for our understanding of ancient society (from a historical point of view), Paul does not mention that as one of its purposes; rather he describes the tanak (sacred writings) as leading you to faith in Christ.

jeremystein further writes:

The Bible seems to offer prophecy as evidence of God. When Isaiah prophesied that Cyrus would call for the temple to be rebuilt, is it important that this actually happened? Would relevant evidence affirm or contradict your faith, or would it be irrelevant to your faith?

The affirmation is nice when you can get it, but I don't particularly see it as necessary for faith. My thought has never been that all the "historical" accounts of the OT are outright false, but that there is precious little history that we can uncover from biblical texts.

Thankfully we have the community of the church which has been interpreting through prayerful meditation on the scriptures -- not to mention the oral tradition and praxis passed on from Christ to the apostles and on through the church. There's power in community -- a community which is both rooted in space and time, but which also is universal and eternal. We have 2000 years of specifically Christian interp of scripture to utilize.

We become a part of that body. That body is not infallible, but it is authoritative. As for the approach to interp there is the saying from Eusebius (iirc) that a theologian is one who prays truly; he who prays truly is a theologian.

It's not about picking and choosing what is convenient for us, but of working within the historical and spiritual witness of the church.

I'm not much of a follower of science. But I'm not ideologically at odds with it, either. There's definitely places where I find it suspect on a more philosophical level -- this is where I should bring in my old friend William Blake, but I didn't bring my book with me. Science, properly speaking, has nothing to say about the existence of God -- those who try to do so are stepping outside the limitations of science.

Hopefully when the ZI comes around I'll spit in their faces and tell them to "Go to hell -- may God have mercy on you because I can't." I'm still a ways off from being able to say, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Tradition doesn't mean checking your brain at the door. But it does mean that one forms his questions within the context of that tradition. I see my relationship with Tradition as something of a tension of trying to wrestle out with it where my differences are. I'll argue and ask questions in the attempt to see my best arguments crash to the ground. Others take a more passive approach and just try to swallow it straight off. I've tried to do that and it just doesn't work for me.

As for homosexuality -- which always seems to come up -- see this:

A priest once told about a man who came to see him about becoming Orthodox. The priest said, “Okay, we’ll need to discuss who Christ is, the Church, the Sacraments ....” The man interrupted him saying, “I’m gay.” The priest said, “Okay. But if you want to become Orthodox, we’ll need to discuss who Christ is, the Church, the Sacraments ....” “Dang it! Didn’t you hear me? I said, I’m gay!” “I heard you,” said the priest, “but if you want to become Orthodox, we’ll need to talk about who Christ is, the Church, the Sacraments ....” Crying, the man told the priest that other pastors had either told him it didn’t matter, or to get out! It took the man a couple years to become Orthodox, but another 10 years to become celibate. He claims he could never have made it without the benefit of Christ, the Church, and the Sacraments.