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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 2/7/2009 7:21 PM (GMT -6) |   | Chaz: In closing, all philosophy is plagued by circularity, infinite regress, or mystery, it is only a matter of how much one is willing to accept. So the IV isn't as useless as you may think it is. Do you realize that for Jesus to predict that Peter would deny Him three times would have required that Jesus knew millions of free will decisions leading up to the denial? I would attribute His foreknowledge of this event to a sort of clairvoyance that is unexplainable to the human mind.
Jeff: Chaz, if God is not the author of confusion, then our basic categories are simply valid. You don't have to believe that if you don't want to. But apart from some kind of commonly accepted foundationalism, communication is impossible. Thus, if we are to communicate, we must AGREE that certain fundamental truths, like events are caused, are just to be accepted, period. We don't have to worry about proving there are proofs once we AGREE to certain fundamental truths ENTAILED in proofs.
As for God's foreknowledge of Peter's denials, I think this is because there WEREN'T lots of free-will CHOICES between conflicting impulses that God had to foreknow. God had to only know the relatively-solidified natures of those people involved in the interactions to providentially influence the outcome. People manipulate people into things all the time. It's not that difficult precisely because people for the most part are just going with their own natural flow.
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Asher
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 477
| Posted 2/7/2009 7:55 PM (GMT -6) | | Chaz: Another conundrum: God exists in three persons, yet God is one, this doctrine seems to violate one of the primary laws of thought viz. identity; yet many of us trinitarians are willing to play the mystery card as well. I think the Christology and incarnation also may violate certain laws of reason as well.
Perhaps you should brush up on how the laws of reason work. Violation of the law of identity would be to say that God is three persons and one person...or...God is three beings and one being (granted being isn't the best way to describe God, but if we understand that God is the one and only self existent ground of being we are on the right track)...that is not what the doctrine of the Trinity teaches. God is three persons in one living being. Most people confuse person with being because human beings are comprised of only one person. Consider it this way:
A rock is no living being and no person.
A plant is a living being, but no person.
Animals are living beings, they have personalisms (personality traits), but we do not recognize them as being a person.
Humans are living beings, and we recognize them as being a person.
God is the solitary, necessary self-existent being who is the ground of being itself, and we recognize three persons - Father, Son and Spirit. Being such a complex being, God exists as the high order of the Trinity.
Being as one must use the laws of reason even to deny the laws of reason, we are pretty much stuck with them, like it or not. | | Back to Top | | |
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