Someone offline asked for my explanation of Category Error. I’ve touched on this before. On this one I’m not happy with the way Wikipedia handles the topic, so I won’t refer to it. Perhaps my answer here will meet with some limited approval from those who have actually studied philosophy.
In essence a category error is mixing logical categories. That is, in the process of offering a logical argument (a logical expression with the formulaic included elements) or assertion, you would attempt to include in a set of objects something which is patently absurd. For example, you might lay down an argument about vehicular traffic and somehow include ducks in the category of “those who drive cars.” In the normal definitions of the terms, that would be a category error.
All of this falls under the heading of classical Western logic, in part because virtually all logical discussions within Western intellectual traditions relies entirely on certain semantic assumptions about how words are used. If you happen to bear in the mind the image of someone wearing a duck costume, that’s technically correct in one sense, but not in the conventional sense. Silly games people play with logic include such nonsense.
When you start applying the classical Western logic to the Bible, you run into one very serious problem: Hebrew people in their native ancient intellectual traditions did not use language the way Westerners do. I’ve noted this so often that regular readers would recognize it instantly. Hebrew thoughts regard language as road signs, indicators of where your personal thoughts should run in broad general terms. Western traditions use language as containers; words mean things and it’s silly trickery to bend them too far. The issue here is the objective behind communications between humans. Hebrew people want you to ponder the gravity of what God demands of you as the first order of business humans must address. Objective reality is simply not that important; our current reality is just a bunch of deception and shadows. Hebrew intellectual assumptions are otherworldly before they even bother to open their mouths. Westerners find this repulsive and denigrate it as playing head games.
Need I remind anyone that God didn’t just choose the Hebrew people, but created them from scratch as a new nation with its own particular spin on Ancient Near Eastern traditions? It’s not that God didn’t know what was coming, but He chose to let His people face things for His own inscrutable reasons. He provided the real deal; everything else is bogus. Nothing in the Old Testament predicts the devastating denial by Aristotle and his friends, asserting that there could not possibly be anything important outside the sensory experience of humanity and the rational capacity for processing it. If you embrace Western rational traditions, you inherently reject the entire foundation of Scripture and all revelation.
And we have nearly two thousand years of Church History embracing Aristotle. Ever hear of Thomas Aquinas and Thomism? Look it up. If you remain a Westerner, you love Thomism. If you understand Ancient Hebrew thinking, you hate it.
When you apply standard, common reasoning to the Bible, you will naturally exclude the very basic assumptions about reality that fires all Hebrew literature. Thus, you will be seizing upon words and phrases and engaging in all sorts of category errors.
We can agree on what it means for a man to “know” something. It’s facts and interpretations, such that he can act on them. That is almost the whole meaning of Aristotle’s epistemology. That’s how it works in common communications in our Western world. This is the unspoken assumption of everything around us in the Western world, and in English language in particular. We have to violate the common use of English to discuss Hebrew Scripture. For God to “know” something is hardly limited to facts and analysis. God made reality and knowledge. He is not confined by reality and certainly not by our understanding of reality. He exists prior to whatever it is humans mean by “knowing.” To discuss what God knows requires you presume a characterization, not a precise discussion of some Being beyond knowing. To discuss God knowing our future is a category error. Saying He makes our future is also a category error. Such language implies a level of interaction with Creation that simply is too narrow and small compared to what is indicated in Scripture — if you understand Scripture as it was written in the Hebrew intellectual style.
When the Bible says “God knows” or “God acts” it is a characterization, never intended as a statement of fact. To apply standard logical categories to those statements is a blasphemous reduction of God and a logical category error. God is in no wise confined to what humans can know or understand, and any statements about God are necessarily symbolic and parabolic. To lay down logical arguments about the implications of His knowledge is a category error from the start. God is not confined to the category of topics that can be discussed in those terms. His existence is not rooted within the realm where such language can define Him. All such discussion is category error. You cannot construct logical arguments about God, period.
You cannot know God as you might any other being. The only way you can know God is personally, and the only thing you can say about Him with any degree of precision is what He requires of you. Any attempt to blather about his traits is never any more precise than characterization. God is not within the category of things we can define.
It touches on the academic definition of the term “mysticism” and “mystical” — a direct and personal experience with something far beyond the human level. To be a mystic means you operate under a set of assumptions that will not fit into a world defined by classical common reasoning. It means you take into consideration revelation from outside the realm of human capability to understand, coming from outside the observable universe, and that it is nonetheless pertinent and applicable to our existence here. Jesus was born of a virgin, impossibly enough, but His human character was derived from an unspoiled and unfallen human nature with a direct line to God. You can’t define or explain that; any declaration is at best a characterization. However, if you embrace that characterization, your mind now has the duty to organize and implement a response to obey the implications. Doing that means you ignore attempts by your reason to pull God down into human categories. You most certainly do not apply to God the moral reasoning you apply to your fellow humans.
Ancient Hebrew Mysticism is the predecessor of proper Christian Mysticism, an intellectual assumption that ultimate truth is beyond human language and beyond human knowing. It requires a faculty above human intellect. The Bible calls that faculty “faith.” It’s a capability roughly equivalent to having your spirit awakened by the divine Presence of God’s Spirit. Jesus referred to that as “born again” or “born from above.” What is Spirit is Spirit, and what is flesh is flesh.
While they might not agree with the general thrust of my contentions, I think if you check with competent experts, you’ll find they have no trouble understanding what I post here.
