In the Old Testament mystical epistemology, God rules all Creation. He works in Creation, could participate in it if He chose, but is certainly rooted in His Being outside of Creation.
Thus, any “sign” from God could be no more than a natural process, well understood by today’s scientists, yet it would be the context of this event which speaks of God and His character. The whole point behind the Covenants of Noah and Moses was tying human behavior to natural and political factors outside of human control. A run of good weather was a sign from God, as was a series of natural disasters. But some of those signs were genuine “miracles” — events where this plane of existence was invaded by a power much higher and external to it.
Even those words are anathema to a Hellenist/Aristotelian. Fundamental to the Hellenist approach is to assume all things — the entire universe and anything which actually exists — is all one thing. It’s best explained as a single continuum. There might well be persons or beings above our level and our perception, but of necessity still rather like us. Maybe not physically, but not significantly different in all characteristics. Thus, we have the ancient Greek myths portraying the gods as suffering some of our human weaknesses.
For the Science Fiction writers and theorists to suggest something truly alien would be impossible to write. We have no frame of reference for something outside our frame of reference. Still, you’ll find the philosophical questions limited to creatures on this plane of existence. You’ll also see a rejection of the fundamental assumption behind all mysticism, which is this domain is inherently broken. They always insist it could be better, that there are no limits to what can be achieved within this plane of existence.
Even when people suggest other dimensions where time is a notional variable, where there can be a fifth, sixth, seventh, etc., dimension possible, it remains a part of this universe, this continuum. When theory proposes you can leave this dimension and step into another, somehow shortcutting space travel, and even time travel, it remains a concept wherein everything is connected in that Aristotelian continuum.
How would you imagine God standing outside of the space-time continuum, seeing all the universe from beginning to end as a single entity? That it remains to Him ultimately manipulable, and He can do anything He pleases, anywhere and anywhen He pleases, because there is a distinct end-point when it’s all finished and it won’t really matter? That He is more than able to account for what it means in terms of changes both forward and backward compatible, and we would never know the difference if He tested an endless number of permutations to amuse Himself. Actually, since He designed and built the whole thing, no “testing” in that sense is needed.
You see, I don’t have words for it, either. At least the Old Testament writers did have a commonly accepted body of symbolism, built into the very Hebrew language itself. Jesus called it “parables.” Yes, that means any discussion of ultimate reality is somehow other than objective, that it cannot be easily collected, analyzed and studied. It always varies with the context, including who is doing the speaking/writing, to whom, when and where and why. That’s the nature of mysticism, the underlying intellectual assumption it cannot be nailed down here on this plane because this plane is fundamentally broken and unreliable in itself. That consistent behavior of physical matter is actually an illusion, and you really can’t trust such things ultimately, but only provisionally.
Mysticism says the ultimate truth of things can only be revealed from outside this plane of existence. That is an epistemology, and it’s different, totally objectionable to Hellenist and Aristotelians. They demand control over the certainty of things, and reject anything outside that certainty under a series of labels meant to disparage it: subjectivism, superstition, etc. Sorry, but God said the only “certainty” which matters is your certainty in obeying the move of His Spirit, a spirit not constrained in any way by our universe. He said He was capable of giving to individuals all the certainty they needed to proceed, and damn what anyone else thinks. And if you are wrong, you’ll find out later, same as if you’re right. Or, perhaps we could say your certainty is the sense of peace you have, and no one on earth gets to measure or question it.
Yeah, Aristotelians hate that. Sorry folks; I can’t help you if this doesn’t make sense.
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A question popped into my head and not a new one to me. Maybe its irrelevant to this post of yours but, if you’ll pardon my wandering, here goes. A problem I share with the Greeks, viewed as such from your perspective I’m inclined to think, is the omniscience of God is excused for the failings of man. I can understand man’s explanation of God’s blinding himself to our free will acts. Really, this makes no sense, though. To accept the excuse one has to also accept that God was unwitting towards the character of his own creation. If I look at Job as a counter-weight I notice God wagered with Satan on the character of Job. Did God wager with himself, placing his son as the bet when he created man? The why the surprise at man’s depravity just prior to the Flood? Just prior to handing down the law to Moses there is a scriptural passage that notates, and I use that word descriptively, that men did things according to their own sense of right and wrong. I wonder, did this mean that prior to the giving of the law but after the fall evil was not imputed into the acts of men because they had no sense of righteousness according to God’s will? Then why is our sinful nature imputed to us from Adam? Or rather, why hand down the law if the law was instinctive beforehand?
So then, was God ignorant of the character of man when he created him? I think the answer is no. If that, then man becomes a pawn, if you will allow the distasteful implication. What part does God want us to play? Communion, predicated by obedience. Well, that didn’t work. I suppose the Old Testament is a teaching tool to let man see, by long experience, that our insistance, desire and efforts to win God’s favor will always be fruitless. But then, if communion is God’s ultimate goal why doesn’t he use the tools he gave us in spades and left to us after the fall to consummate his will towards us? Why don’t the five senses work for finding God? I can’t figure why God dulled the tool that man would use to commune with him (spiritual discernment) and make the tools he left us with, the senses, off limits to himself to get his will done? Is communion His goal or some benchmark of the game?
Now do you see the seeds of Greek doubt? God did use the senses from time to time to make some kind of point, so He claims; Jesus being the exclamation point. God claims to be no respecter of persons. If He wants communion He can use the method He has used before. If he doesn’t then either men are not worthy, so why bother, or we are left to question if God is God or is our God. Or He is but we’re just tools.
Nothing intrisnic sets faith apart as an attribute of self unless the whole thing is but a game. With that, its very hard to tell if the game is even real. Hence, Greek doubt.
Yes, those would be thoughts common to a Hellenized epistemology. It’s all too easy to read our time lines and such back into the Scriptures. But they arose from a totally different outlook, and often those who wrote that Scripture simply took for granted certain things were common knowledge. We are having a mighty struggle trying to recover that assumed background. Its what I’ve given my life to, in part.
The ANE approach is assuming the purposes of God are inscrutable. Rather, we focus instead on the few things we do understand, which is the Laws of God. We have our assigned areas of responsibility, and that doesn’t include speculations as you cite above. However, I suppose I am most comfortable with those of CS Lewis: That God wanted to prove His justice to some unknown audience there on the Eternal Plane, outside of our view. Earth and human history is the proof.
The man-centered Hellenist approach really despises that sort of thinking. Somehow we simply must be more important than that. It’s not as if the Hebrew people never got stuck in that false notion, but it wasn’t native to good ANE intellectual development. The ability to embrace being a demonstration — roughly the same as a pawn — is not native to any part of Western cultural background, yet is totally normal to ANE thinking.
I don’t doubt God’s purposes nor disagree that they’re inscrutable. I am putting Greek thought to question the methods God uses to achieve what He says is His main objective; communion with man. If I were going to ask for the Greek Hellenist here is what I’d ask. Why, Lord, won’t you meet us on the plane on which we find ourselves?
Ah. I suppose the only answer we could offer there would be Jesus. I’m not very fond of Western Christology, though. It was politicized from the start, with silly stuff like the Nestorian controversy. Under Western tutelage I never really could connect with Christ as a Person; He remained a cerebral construct. Now I can report I see His human personality.
I appreciate your taking time to stop by and comment, Mike.
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