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This is an issue that I have been pondering the last several months/years.
Is it possible to view reality in terms of unchanging absolutes while at the same time allowing meaning to take on a fluid nature?
Can two viewpoints that are opposing to one another be used to accurately describe the same thing?
I am interested in the tension between different interpretations of the truth and the actual truth, in particular the apparent contradictions (i.e. we have free will, yet God has predetermined all our footsteps).
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ June 08, 2004 02:49 PM: Message edited by: JJVW ]</font>
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joshua, i think both your question can be answered with a "yes" we cannot fully understand absolutes with seeing it through fluidity or different perspectives, also seeing contradictions as different perspectives of a singular truth lessens the fear of contradictions. Dr. John Frame wrote a book called "doctrine of the knowledge of God" dealing with these as well as other problems and it is "absolutely" brilliant.
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i forgot to write this earlier but what i said is similiar to cubism. the different perspectives seen is a cubistic painting are all valid interpretations of an object, however, they need each other to correctly see the entire object painted.
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The problem I often face with this issue is that of making judgements and the establishing of a hierarchy. I am becoming increasingly notorious at school for doing both. What's worse is that I do it with confidence. I would like to do this more and do so with an increased authority.
Has anybody encountered and delt with the concept of multiple histories--none being any more or less accurate than another?
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A friend of mine from the ol' NW (pronounced, "en-dubb"), who shall here be referred to as "Thatetra" (and how I wish he would join this discussion!) once clarified something about the law of noncontradiction for me. I was saying that "A cannot be both B and non-B," and he added "...at the same time and in the same sense."
Something I just read:
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If anything (call it "A") is a member of the class we have called "B", then A cannot under any condition also (at the same time and in the same sense) be a member of the complementary class of non-B
...It is impossible for Socrates to be both man and nonman. Since the class of nonman is the complement of the class of man, the claim that Socrates is also a member of the class of non-B ("nonman") is tantamount to saying that Socrates is not only a human but also everything else in the universe.... Gordon H. Clark outlines the implications of this:
"If contradictory statements are true of the same subject at the same time, evidently all things will be the same thing. Socrates will be a ship, a house, as well as a man. But if precisely the same attributes attach to Crito that attach to Socrates it follows that Socrates is Crito. Not only so, but the ship in the harbor, since it has the same list of attributes too, will be identified with this Socrates-Crito person. In fact, everything will be the same thing. All differences among things will vanish and all will be one."
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Nash, Life's Ultimate Questions, p. 195. Zondervan, 1999. Quoting also Clark, Thales to Dewey, p. 103. The Trinity Foundation, 1989.
::bows to the aplogists::
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ June 13, 2004 02:46 PM: Message edited by: Chasing Sophia ]</font>
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P.S. Josh you're a stinking heirarchical ladder climber.
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I got yer playful manner right here, sister.
[shakes fist in a menacing manner]
I don't think that saying that Jesus was fully God and fully man is the same thing as saying that A cannot be both B and non-B. "B" and "non-B" are contradictory. Are "Being God" and "being man" contradictory? Hm. Yeah, I guess it seems from the examples given above regarding Socrates that if "Socrates is a man" and "Socrates is a house" are contradictory, then "Jesus is a man" and "Jesus is a God" would be (?). I don't understand the theory well enough to answer. rgk and Rick might.
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HEIRARCHY THIS, JOSEPH!! As I turn around to shake my fist towards Missouri (in a playful manner).
How about the Jesus=God/Man paradox? Isn't Christ both A and B at the same time and in the same sense?
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ June 14, 2004 12:17 PM: Message edited by: JJVW ]</font>
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hey jesus does given the law of non-contradiction a run for its money, but he gives everything a run for its money. richard pratt wrote a fine little article on the this law, it is somewhere on the third mill. web site (www.thirdmill.org)i tried to find it but failed, i will try again because it is good and it disagree's w/ nash (who was a fellow proff. w/ pratt) i think what pratt said was the law of non-contra. fails because it doesn't deal w/ time and it assumes to much for human intelligence. basically time, can be continously broken down into smaller units and you end up w/ a paradox for their is no movement and no change. time should be thought of more fluidly a contineous process to the transformation of 'a' to 'b'is not divivisable into two separate moments. also the 'law' assumes are knowledge is infinite which it is not. until we know 'a' is not 'b' in china or everywhere in the universe we can't say it's a contradiction. i fear these thoughts are confusing, so if i made this topic worse i am sorry and will try to clarify in the future
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Pratt sounds interesting. I have held for some time that while humanity is able to gain access to the Truth, we cannot know it in its entirety. To see it in its whole would be incomprehensible to us in our current state of affairs. This is what leads me to think that there are areas of Truth that are seemingly contradictory because our minds are unable to make the proper connections.
The issue of time is an interesting one because while we exhist in time (be it linear or circular), God does not.
It also makes me wonder if there is ultimately no such thing as true chaos. Bare with me on this. I know there are some leaps with the following statements. If God is a god of order and God continously upholds all aspects of creation, then there can be no disorder. What if chaos, sin, disorder, etc. are a result of our being unable to understand the whole of Truth. It is only through His divine light that more and more of these connections are able to be made, thus allowing us to know increasing amounts of Truth. But we cannot know all things at all times.
Now bring time into the equation. Given our fallen situation. Can only certain facets of the Truth be revealed at any given time, thus forcing us to change the way we deal with similar situations at different times? Assuming that our handlings are correct, would we then be able to see, in a situation that exhists outside of time and space, the fundamental similarities of our actions?
!!
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ June 16, 2004 06:07 PM: Message edited by: JJVW ]</font>
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(bump)
Just didn't want to let this one slip through the cracks.
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I just re-read my previous post after letting it sit for a week. I find myself way too amusing!
Don't let that stop anyone from tackling this one, though. I still stand behind it.
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JJVW,
I find I agree with your statements on truth. We cannot know the entire "Truth", for to do so would make us omniscient and umm.....God.
However, to bring things back to earth again...God has created within us enough capacity to comprehend enough Truth in order to cause us to undergo something completely against our own nature (that only HE could accomplish):to save us eternally.
And at the end of all things, isn't that what "truly" matters?
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I don't think I ever left the earth with this one. Yes, it is enough to know that we have access to salvation, but that seems to be just a starting point. I want more. I want to understand and appreciate what it is that God has created and put in place. As I have stated in the original email discussions, I am not satisfied with a "for the Bible tells me so" answer. I think we short change ourselves if we stop there. Yes, Jesus loves me. But why? Part of this questioning requires trying to figure out an epistimology. How can we truly understand the morals and ethics we hold on to as Christians if we don't try to understand what Truth is in the first place? If God is the "be all to end all," then He can certainly withstand my questioning of Him. As long as I go into it with the knowlege that any disagreements are my failings and that I will never completely figure things out, then I do not feel this form of skepticism poses a problem.
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This is called a bump.
It's performed so that the discussion doesn't fall off the bottom of the screen.
Thank you, goodnight.
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