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Mephi2K
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 10/14/2001 5:28 AM (GMT -6)

A Really Stupid Idea.

Off the Cuff Definitions:

Conceptualism: Universals possess reality, but only as an idea in the mind, not as a self-subsisting metaphysical entity.

More medieval realism: Universals can and do exist outside of any particular existent example of such universal.

Modern realism: Objects of sense perception have objective reality WITHOUT it being perceived.

(If a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound?)

[Meph's Note: BOTH of these ideas of realism have to do, in some way, with the idea of essence]

Nominalism: Universals, are without essential or substantive reality, and only individual objects have real existence.

Short and sweet of it:

Conceptualism to God becomes REALISM (both types) to creatures, when God actualized his "ideas" in the creative event. Restated, God's actualized IDEAS are our REALITY. The "essense" of universals would be the primodial establishment of God. Because of our finite nature, and our corresponding perspectival experience of reality, much of our knowledge will be unchangeably nominalistic, in result and method. The Christian theistic concept of can be seen as the "Grand Unifier" in this issue. From a human standpoint, critical realism and conceptualism are keys to discerning reality.

So, my take:

I am a critical realist, in that I believe that there is objective reality behind our senses that gives sufficient information to understanding the reality around us, but NEVER enough to fully bridge the gap between ontology and epistemology. Even if direct "revelation" of reality occurs, it is ALWAYS passed through a grid of individual interpretation. Because I am a Christian theist who believes that God is the Arbiter of all reality, I am a more medieval realist, in that I believe that there ARE universals in reality that may or may not exist outside of our experience of the particular examples. One of these universals would be the categories that WE call "humanity." I believe that FROM A HUMAN STANDPOINT, conceptualism rules. When naming or classifying things, OUR inducted "universals" ARE ideas in the mind that have no metaphysical reality outside of that. However, it could be said that those humanly constructed universal ideas CORRESPOND to those God-ordained universals already known to God.

Frankly, I don't see how one can believe in an ultimately purposeful Creator God and NOT be a realist of some kind.

Brief and pertinent example.

Human beings. God says "I want to create human beings" In doing this, he mentally lays out a SCHEMATIC for what human beings will (and will not) be. The competenties, limitations, capacities, etc. Because God is the ultimate definer of reality, these characteristics could be said to be REAL and universality binding in that reality. The universals of humanity START OUT as concepts in the mind of God, but upon actualization, become BINDING UNIVERAL LAWS of reality. And each individual human being is an EXAMPLE of those laws in operation. Would "human nature" exist had God not created human beings. Surely it would, but ONLY as an idea in God's mind! Due to God's place as arbitor of reality, something need not be EXISTENT to be REAL. (It really ain't all that deep)

Now, it's time to note something important. I can hear nominalists perhaps saying: What about the distinctives WITHIN the common rubric of "humanity"? How does one give reality to the PARTICULAR differences among human beings? This is where the idea of "dispositions", I believe, really hits home. By saying that God creates reality as "bounded creativity", we could say that God has made Creation in such as way that Creation goes its own way WITHIN LIMITS. (Doesn't Doc and other open view theists like him always say this anyway??) Thus the deviations within those limits have their own reality and given meaning to ideas of particularity.

Notice what has happened. Doc's valid argument of universal PRESCRIPTIONS for aspects of reality is satisfied...while Modes' valid emphasis on particularity and the existence of "subjects" is not sacfificed.

Now, what philosophical perspective(s) do I feel does justice to everything that I've said above? Need you even ask?

Like I said, a really stupid idea...

PS: Doc said:

"Now if want to argue that God in fact could be other than God is -- God could have chosen to be unloving, unholy, etc... we are into a very different discussion. Wanna have it?"

Heh. You KNOW I'll dance with you on it.

(Hint: Checkmate in 5 moves.)

GregBoyd
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted 10/14/2001 5:44 PM (GMT -6)

Meph: You KNOW I'll dance with you on it.

(Hint: Checkmate in 5 moves.)

Doc: (Sense we're mixing metaphors) Well, I'm not sure I can checkmate you in a mere five moves

, but I like to dance.

"Three is the magic number, oh yes it is, it's the Magic Number" - De La Soul

Modes of Thought
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817

Posted 10/15/2001 5:27 AM (GMT -6)

I am elated that Mephi has returned!!!

I will be back.

To whet yer appitite, I am thinking some of the categorical distinctions SK stands by in his book "The Concept of Anxiety" seem pertinent somewhere in all this. Meph, if you haven't really read SK much, I suggest you try this book on fo size. I think you will like it. VERY dense, but soo good.

doc, have you read that one?

I will be back....

(Meph, you gotta back me on the resistance to the tri-borg cult that is no longer latent beneath the surface, it is really beginning to "declare itself" as doctors have been known to say of an emerging sickness)

Tell me too, Mephi, I suspect that doc's move from dogma to ontology is questionable when he makes ontological claims based upon the dogma that God is Love. Love is many things, but it is not properly an ontological category. What do you say? I know this dance is underway, but I think categorical clarity and distinction needs to play a stronger role this time through....OF course the crux of this will be in what sorts of abductions are warranted or not....hence this convo on this thread. Maybe there is hope for getting back to the original question here yet!!!!

dosey doe....

"to be neurotic is human, to be psychotic is sinful...."
Paul Tillich

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 10/15/2001 11:24 AM (GMT -6)

Modes:

quote:
Love is many things, but it is not properly an ontological category.

Modes, you and Mephi2 are beyond me. But here is my Que-cents.

"Communion" -- according to Zizioulas -- *IS* an ontological category. YOU said that "Love is many things". What KIND of Love are you speaking of then? In "Being as Communion, in the first chapter ("Personhood and Being") the first section is called "From Mask to Person: The Birth of an Ontology of Personhood." I can't furnish you with a page with the quote above, but that title pretty much says it all -- don't you think? Person is different from individual. You just can't be a person by yourself. I'd say that this Swede is convinced that love IS an ontological category! I also now believe that marriage is a sacrament. (And I'd take a whipping before betraying it.)

So maybe I'll be watching this string to see what happens.

PotOnWheel

(ISA 64:8 "Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.")

Modes of Thought
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817

Posted 10/15/2001 12:49 PM (GMT -6)

quote:

Modes:
quote:
Love is many things, but it is not properly an ontological category.

Modes, you and Mephi2 are beyond me. But here is my Que-cents.

"Communion" -- according to Zizioulas -- *IS* an ontological category. YOU said that "Love is many things". What KIND of Love are you speaking of then? In "Being as Communion, in the first chapter ("Personhood and Being") the first section is called "From Mask to Person: The Birth of an Ontology of Personhood." I can't furnish you with a page with the quote above, but that title pretty much says it all -- don't you think? Person is different from individual. You just can't be a person by yourself. I'd say that this Swede is convinced that love IS an ontological category! I also now believe that marriage is a sacrament. (And I'd take a whipping before betraying it.)

So maybe I'll be watching this string to see what happens.

PotOnWheel

(ISA 64:8 "Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.")

I am not totally confident in what I am saying yet, but I am trying to do the best I can to keep the categories clear and consistent. The main categories I am working with are furnished by Kierkegaard (no surprise) and the way they get laid out is like this:
aesthetic
ethical
religious

These are the ones most pertinent to persons as they go through "the stages on life's way" so to speak. The catgories are not linear, but cyclical, but there is a progression. Each of SK's major works is an attempt to get a person to "leap" from one catgory to the next, precisely by showing the inadequacy of the category itself, without the others. Now there is another catgory that is used much more cautiously by SK:
the metaphysical

Here is a fantastic quote that illustrates my concern with Greg:

quote:

"....how strange everything becomes when metaphysics and dogmatics are distorted by treating dogmatics metaphysically and metaphysics dogmatically." (pg 59, of SK's "The Concept of Anxiety" recent Princeton edition 1980.)

Now, love is a category that functions in the aesthetic to some degree (thinking here of romaticized love), perhaps in the ethical (moralized love), but with trouble because of the idea of justice, and fits best in the religious (here we can speak of dogmatics' insistance that "God is Love" and God's dictum to us to love ourselves, neighbors and God). Regardless, it is a category that assumes personhood, and thereby subjectivity as the context. Metaphysics is quite different, it seems. In metaphysics, I can see that ideas like freedom, chance, possibility, necessity, these categories seem to fit, but Love? This seems out of place. Of course, doc brings love into metaphysics by abduction, but I am asking, is this warranted, and what sort of explanitory mileage are we entitled to based on such abductions that seem at least questionable.

Mephi!! Rescue me from the confusion of categorical mishmash!

I think the deeper question here is emerging for me: are we to expect clear continuity from one catgory to another or do we confess (admit, really) that there are leaps that are made when we abduct from one to the next?

Here's a bit from the preface that I really appreciate:

quote:

The age of making distinctions is past. It has been vanquished by the system. In our day, whoever loves to make distinctions is regarded as an eccentric whose soul clings to something that has long since vanished. Be that as it may, yet Socrates still is what he was, the simple wise man, because of the peculiar distinction that he expressed both in words and in life, something that the eccentric Hamann first reiterated with great admiration two thousand years later: "For Socrates was great in 'that he distinguished between what he understood and what he did not understand.'"

Is this helping anybody track with my concerns? I'll be back....

"to be neurotic is human, to be psychotic is sinful...."
Paul Tillich

Edited by - ModesofThought on 10/15/2001 5:53:28 PM

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 10/15/2001 1:31 PM (GMT -6)

My "tuition" is to carefully read what you've written, Modes. I read. I confess I did not track well. I'll continue to try. (Part of my trouble is I have no perceived need along that line.)

But now this......

Following up on the "Communion as an ontological catagory" motif is this. AND ITS A BIGGY. Part of where/when I first learned this had, I believe, to do with the Trinitarian-oriented discussion of the Person trumping the Essence. Modes, you take the Love out of the catagory of being and you get the pagan static/impersonal deity again. I don't want to go down THAT path!

PotOnWheel

(ISA 64:8 "Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.")

Modes of Thought
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817

Posted 10/15/2001 2:16 PM (GMT -6)

quote:

My "tuition" is to carefully read what you've written, Modes. I read. I confess I did not track well. I'll continue to try. (Part of my trouble is I have no perceived need along that line.)

But now this......

Following up on the "Communion as an ontological catagory" motif is this. AND ITS A BIGGY. Part of where/when I first learned this had, I believe, to do with the Trinitarian-oriented discussion of the Person trumping the Essence. Modes, you take the Love out of the catagory of being and you get the pagan static/impersonal deity again. I don't want to go down THAT path!

PotOnWheel

(ISA 64:8 "Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.")

Hello again friend, you are actually in e coversation quite well. Your suggestion that communion is an ontological category is pertinent. My wondering whether Love is an ontological category is NOT to say that I in anyway deny that God is love. I am simply trying to get as clear as I can about what is being said when, and in relation to what. We all have and use categories, I am just trying to iron out my own understanding of what ones I have and use and how effectively/coherently.

Of course, I have no desire to return to a static ontology, but love is not what drives the opposite. Possibility is. And "possibility" IS a category relevant to ontology. A static ontology cannot tolerate the category of possibility.

Meph's stuff requires my attention above, I will need to reread some of it before I really get serious here (meaning before I can formulate my thoughts at length and with more confidence, not that this interaction is "not serious" in fact it is, and important, too.)

Now, as I understand it, as a nominalist, I should not throw out the categories, but rather be honest about what they are and how they are to be used best. This means to me, that I should work for as much conceptual clarity as possible, in the light of the data relevant to the conversation. But I should be weary of out-running the data unduely for the sake of my satisfaction in achieving a "unified whole" that is really only such in my imagination. In this way, I suppose I lean as much toward a historical/empirical theology as toward a systematic one, but the principle of contradiction gives us hope that this distinction is not final.

Let me read meph and get back to this....

POW, can you tell me if there are important distinctions between various areas of study in the Eastern Church that might be of some use to me? Or do they abhor such cataloguing? They strike me as more mystical/dogmatic(in a positive sense)/imaginative then the West, though of course, we did receive the influence of Aristotle to Aquinas via the East didn't we? I guess there must be some work of that sort that would be of interest. hmmm....

I'll be back.

"to be neurotic is human, to be psychotic is sinful...."
Paul Tillich

Edited by - modesofthought on 10/15/2001 7:17:30 PM

Modes of Thought
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817

Posted 10/15/2001 3:26 PM (GMT -6)

Actually, I think perhaps I am more reacting to realism than rationalism. I assume the principle of contradiction to be valid, and thereby I agree that what is logically meaningless is not thereby a useful tool for ascribing meaning elsewhere. Even by abduction or analogy.

Realism is truly where I am skeptical, perhaps do to my overly (?) sensitive awareness of the split between our concepts and the reality they are to represent. I think conceptualism fits me in terms of how I envision God, I can make sense of divine ideas as such, but I would call them "possibilities". These are by definition unrealized. But I can make no sense out of what it means for a universal to "exist" with out particular existants. Either a possibility is realized or it is not. When it is realized, it then is actuality, and not just that, but takes the form of a necessity in relation to future possibilities. Any hypothetical questions can be answered objectively in only one way for certain. Does God know x as possible, as actual, or as -x, which is to say it is nonsense and not data at all. I am not interested in conversations about essence, but I do think continuity needs to be accounted for. What is "real" are not things, but events, but this of course, I recognize as my way of conceptualizing most rigorously. I cannot prove it, I assume it. Largely because I can see that I will have to assume either one (essentialism) or the other (relationalism/eventism/panseqentialism) and the one relativizes the other in a logically rigorous system, or so it seems. So I agree with Meph so far, Conceptualism with regard to God and what we postulate as divine knowledge.

quote:

Conceptualism: Universals possess reality, but only as an idea in the mind, not as a self-subsisting metaphysical entity.

yup. So far so good.

Now on to:

quote:

Nominalism: Universals, are without essential or substantive reality, and only individual objects have real existence.

This clearly fits me in terms of my own strategy for gaining understanding. I do not suppose that my conceptualism is God's conceptualism. The infinite qualitative difference in perspective makes supposing this simply dishonest to me. Here I am with meph Squarely AGAINST naive realism.

Meph goes this way:

quote:

Short and sweet of it:

Conceptualism to God becomes REALISM (both types) to creatures, when God actualized his "ideas" in the creative event. Restated, God's actualized IDEAS are our REALITY. The "essense" of universals would be the primodial establishment of God. Because of our finite nature, and our corresponding perspectival experience of reality, much of our knowledge will be unchangeably nominalistic, in result and method. The Christian theistic concept of can be seen as the "Grand Unifier" in this issue. From a human standpoint, critical realism and conceptualism are keys to discerning reality.

I track with God's ideas actualized constitute our reality. I'd drop essence language and speak of omnipotently maintained agendas/guidelines/covenants of some sort, the only thing absolutely unchangable is that which is past. If it is true that for God, all things are possible (barring logical contradictions) and moreover, we have seen that God can change God's mind, why think that God cannot change the way things are? Of course we assume that God CAN when we pray. To some extent anyway. We must opporate nominalistically as Mephi said, but how then do you call yourself a realist Meph? Is functional nominalism compatible with epistemological realism? The categories are fading for me.

quote:

So, my take:

I am a critical realist, in that I believe that there is objective reality behind our senses that gives sufficient information to understanding the reality around us, but NEVER enough to fully bridge the gap between ontology and epistemology. Even if direct "revelation" of reality occurs, it is ALWAYS passed through a grid of individual interpretation. Because I am a Christian theist who believes that God is the Arbiter of all reality, I am a more medieval realist, in that I believe that there ARE universals in reality that may or may not exist outside of our experience of the particular examples. One of these universals would be the categories that WE call "humanity." I believe that FROM A HUMAN STANDPOINT, conceptualism rules. When naming or classifying things, OUR inducted "universals" ARE ideas in the mind that have no metaphysical reality outside of that. However, it could be said that those humanly constructed universal ideas CORRESPOND to those God-ordained universals already known to God.

Frankly, I don't see how one can believe in an ultimately purposeful Creator God and NOT be a realist of some kind.

Brief and pertinent example.

Human beings. God says "I want to create human beings" In doing this, he mentally lays out a SCHEMATIC for what human beings will (and will not) be. The competenties, limitations, capacities, etc. Because God is the ultimate definer of reality, these characteristics could be said to be REAL and universality binding in that reality. The universals of humanity START OUT as concepts in the mind of God, but upon actualization, become BINDING UNIVERAL LAWS of reality. And each individual human being is an EXAMPLE of those laws in operation. Would "human nature" exist had God not created human beings. Surely it would, but ONLY as an idea in God's mind! Due to God's place as arbitor of reality, something need not be EXISTENT to be REAL. (It really ain't all that deep)

Now, it's time to note something important. I can hear nominalists perhaps saying: What about the distinctives WITHIN the common rubric of "humanity"? How does one give reality to the PARTICULAR differences among human beings? This is where the idea of "dispositions", I believe, really hits home. By saying that God creates reality as "bounded creativity", we could say that God has made Creation in such as way that Creation goes its own way WITHIN LIMITS. (Doesn't Doc and other open view theists like him always say this anyway??) Thus the deviations within those limits have their own reality and given meaning to ideas of particularity.

Notice what has happened. Doc's valid argument of universal PRESCRIPTIONS for aspects of reality is satisfied...while Modes' valid emphasis on particularity and the existence of "subjects" is not sacfificed.

Now, what philosophical perspective(s) do I feel does justice to everything that I've said above? Need you even ask?

Why think that God needs the benefit we take from realism with regard to universals? If God is the point of reference for all meaningfulness, something/anything is what it is precisely in relation to God's knowledge and sustanance of it. God has no need of universals, as far as I can see. Is this not implied in the very idea of an infinitely intelligent being?

Another problematic question for later at night....
And what happens when we speak of a properly trinitarian God? What if God is not simply a single mind as we are? Hmmmm.... (more problematically, should this have been the FIRST question? or the last?)
Nominalism gives me some more fog to hide in at least. (The metaphor here is that TOO much clarity is not satisfying the facts so far, not that I am running away from the facts, but that I cannot avoid them so easily, in nominalism, I don't have to.)

So I am seeking simplicity and clarity, and distrusting it. (Dr. Sponheim of Luther Seminary gave me this idea, though he is surely NOT a nominalist.)

ANY help and/or engagement would be appreciated.

"to be neurotic is human, to be psychotic is sinful...."
Paul Tillich

Mephi2K
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 10/15/2001 5:36 PM (GMT -6)

Very quick...before work.

Modes said:

Why think that God needs the benefit we take from realism with regard to universals? If God is the point of reference for all meaningfulness, something/anything is what it is precisely in relation to God's knowledge and sustanance of it. God has no need of universals, as far as I can see. Is this not implied in the very idea of an infinitely intelligent being?

Just a note. It seems to me that you may be thinking of the idea of "universals" more as a epistemological convenience than of a "template" of sorts based upon foundations of reality that PRESCRIBES possibility (which necessarily precede actuality). Doc and I are thinking of universals as the latter with reference to God's implicit and explicit defining of reality. This is why I said that I didn't see how one can believe in an ultimately purposeful Creator God and NOT be a realist of some kind.

and I agree with Modes on the "love" stuff. Need more time...

MUCH more to say later.

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 10/15/2001 5:57 PM (GMT -6)

Wellll..... I read the above, and follow where the water is not too deep...

So..... (Mine's a mile wide and an inch deep...)

Modes: Hello again friend, you are actually in e conversation quite well. Your suggestion that communion is an ontological category is pertinent. My wondering whether Love is an ontological category is NOT to say that I in anyway deny that God is love. I am simply trying to get as clear as I can about what is being said when, and in relation to what. We all have and use categories, I am just trying to iron out my own understanding of what ones I have and use and how effectively/coherently.

POW: With regard to "We all have and use categories" I'd say... My cross-disciplinary comment is that "categories" are the especial domain of graduate students! (For example: some artists make things that "looks like graduate work." ) But it is good and necessary to do what you are doing, now. Much like the Greek Fathers worked "through" categories to the thoughts that they knew needed thinking. . .artists might begin making work that "transcends" the "conventions" of the style of genre, or "category." The great one's do.

Modes: Of course, I have no desire to return to a static ontology, but love is not what drives the opposite. Possibility is. And "possibility" IS a category relevant to ontology. A static ontology cannot tolerate the category of possibility.

Modes continues...: Meph's stuff requires my attention above, I will need to reread some of it before I really get serious here (meaning before I can formulate my thoughts at length and with more confidence, not that this interaction is "not serious" in fact it is, and important, too.)

Modes continues...: Now, as I understand it, as a nominalist, I should not throw out the categories, but rather be honest about what they are and how they are to be used best. This means to me, that I should work for as much conceptual clarity as possible, in the light of the data relevant to the conversation. But I should be weary of out-running the data unduly for the sake of my satisfaction in achieving a "unified whole" that is really only such in my imagination. In this way, I suppose I lean as much toward a historical/empirical theology as toward a systematic one, but the principle of contradiction gives us hope that this distinction is not final.

POW: With regard to "achieving a "unified whole"" I'd say... "If you meet the Buddha, kill him." If you ever get a closed system -- and I'm betting that you really aren't trying to do this.....but sometimes I wonder....you will either have created a god, or made yourself to be one. "Throw the Buddha in the fire."

Modes: Let me read meph and get back to this....

Modes: POW, can you tell me if there are important distinctions between various areas of study in the Eastern Church that might be of some use to me? Or do they abhor such cataloguing? They strike me as more mystical/dogmatic(in a positive sense)/imaginative then the West, though of course, we did receive the influence of Aristotle to Aquinas via the East didn't we? I guess there must be some work of that sort that would be of interest. hmmm....

POW: With regard to "important distinctions between various areas of study" I'd say... You are asking a know-nothing. My brother-in-law, a convert, says of theology (but I might misspeak) that as I undersigned, it is the School-asticizing yearning that likes to make each element self-standing, and then order them all in a way that is just oh so neat!) My impression, and/or the one I'd like to leave, is that the Eastern Church is centered on ONE thing, the "one thing necessary" (as Jesus told Martha). And everything comes down to salvation, to relationship with God, to becoming what he commanded of us and prepared toward and works with us on. Maximus the Confessor as Thunberg (a good Lutheran) might be well worth the read. M. was so consistent, and also expansive in the areas that were all brought together -- bringing together what had been long foundationally felt and begun forming... to put this into some kind of concrete form (But artists are never concrete, even when they say they are being so...) I wonder whether one could say that all the "various areas of study are all treated so that THEY ALL POINT TO the one thing. The central mystery of Christianity is that God became man that man might become like God, by grace. (But I'm not EO; I'm just a mutt. Find an expert!) A guest preacher Sunday at a CRC church does inner city ministry big time. He had a wonderful "application" for Colossians 1:15-20, painting a picture of cross-denominational and cross-strata cooperation in trying to rescue the dying parts of the city. Wonderful! But he did so after first admitting that he had no clue as to what exactly Paul meant, or how Paul had come up with it -- except by inspiration. I think that it is a nice parallel to the Eucharistic celebration. Christ took all our humanity, the "fullness" of all dwells in Him, reconciling all things to Himself. What historical nominalist ever did a good job of understanding that one? Thunberg does something interesting: "the incarnation likeness of the sacrament receives the responsive likeness of the communicant into itself and transforms it into the likeness of human deification." Not bad. The effort to track the individual "blips" as this happens brings up an image in my mind of the photos of subatomic particle paths. Christ deifying our humanity in his own body, and that life being enhypostasized to us... Blink your mind away from your heart for an instant and it is too late...you miss the action.! Learning that "parts" is good. But the "whole" is where it is at.

POW: With regard to "They strike me as more mystical/dogmatic(in a positive sense)/imaginative then the West" I'd say... But remember the tension used in paradoxical statements. AND, "mystical" is not all that good a word. "Mystery" is, instead. "Mystical" maybe sets something apart from and separate from something else, as either or. "Symbolic or Real?" Don't choose. Is the expression "realistic symbolism or symbolic realism? (red-orange or orange-red?) Jesus IS the Bread of Life. We actually require His own life. We are dead. For Jesus to say "this is my body" -- THAT is a "mystery." It was NOT MYSTICAL. Mystery, symbolic and real. Seemingly with winding contours if you follow it with your mind. Jesus, God-made-flesh by taking matter, redeems matter. "This is my body" holds out matter presented with the declaration of redemption. Seems that to take Life is to also take Life-ed. To believe in Life-ed is to believe in Life. To believe in salvation is to believe in the Savior. to believe in the Savior is to believe in and to say yes to salvation. To eat. The stumbling block seems to be acceptance of two inseparable things: that God redeems/tranfigures and that being transformed/redeemed means dying and taking on God's life. In so doing you have to give up your own life. I think that the West probably has a habit of actually thinking "mystical" when it ought to be thinking "mystery." (Heard as much too.)

POW: With regard to "though of course, we did receive the influence of Aristotle to Aquinas via the East didn't we?" I'd say... Promise to study history? Which route? How different?

Modes: I'll be back.

POW: Good.

PotOnWheel

(ISA 64:8 "Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.")

(Increased in VISUAL SIZE by the below at the time below.)

Edited by - PotOnWheel on 10/18/2001 9:43:55 PM

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 10/16/2001 4:35 PM (GMT -6)

On "mystical" at an interesting site:

Also interesting:

Edited by - PotOnWheel on 10/16/2001 9:38:51 PM

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 10/16/2001 5:14 PM (GMT -6)

for Modes....(re: history)

Modes said: "the West, though of course, we did receive the influence of Aristotle to Aquinas via the East didn't we? I guess there must be some work of that sort that would be of interest. hmmm...."

Here is something that applies: . And from it comes this:

quote:
The end of the Dark Ages was mainly due to third-hand Latin translations of the Muslim Aristotle and translations of Arabic commentaries on the Greek philosophers. Translations of the Cordovan Arabic materials gave birth to two new Western paradigms that supplanted the original Greek-language paradigm of the New Testament and early Christians. If contact with Eastern thinking had been broken and lost in the West, it remained alive in Constantinople, as it still does in present-day Orthodoxy. Energy is an important aspect of ontology (the study of being) in this paradigm: Each energy is paired with a corresponding dynamis which becomes actual and realized when energized. Even had the Western link with Greek learning not been broken, Latin thinking would probably have replaced it with two new paradigms derived from Cordovan learning; at any; rate, Muslims and Jews were cited by Aquinas as authoritative, though Aristotle was the final authority in philosophy. The two new paradigms were the Thomism of the Dominicans and the Nominalism of the Franciscans—initially developed by scholars at Oxford like Roger Marston and Richard of Middleton, who studied also at Paris. Richard regarded Aquinas’s potentia materiae “potential of matter” as an improvement on the rationes seminales but affirmed that “will is the noblest power in the soul” and that “will is simply nobler than intellect.” What these scholars had begun culminated in three Oxford Franciscans who later migrated to Paris—John Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, and William of Ockham. If the fourteenth century was the heyday of Scholasticism—Thomas Aquinas was thirteen years of age in 1832, the half-way point between 476, the beginning of the Dark Ages, and 2000—the fourteenth-century Ockham’s Nominalism remained vigorous throughout the fifteenth century. It was this philosophy, called the via moderna, that the early sixteenth-century Reformer, Martin Luther, claimed to be an adherent of, despite his rejections of Scholasticism generally: Luther is reported to have maintained that Ockham was the only Scholastic worth reading. His other modernism was the Gnostic-leaning devotio moderna, partly derived from earlier German mystical writings and eventuating in seventeenth-century Pietism.

I'd rather that spark interest in hitting the link. But we'll see what Modes does.

Edited by - PotOnWheel on 10/18/2001 9:45:48 PM

Modes of Thought
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817

Posted 10/16/2001 7:43 PM (GMT -6)

Thanks alot POW, you totally derailed me for WELL over an hour.

Okay, I'll take that book you offered, even at the risk that ciberbuns is gonna steal it. I read all that time and I didn't even bother to figure out what books this stuff is from. I saw impressive references, Pelikan and stuff. I think I am trackin' better with you on the energy stuff now. There is some pretty nominalistic leanings over there on the Eastern side, eh? cool. Now, go say something good on the normal people thread....I anticipate that you have an opinion on the topic of imagination that we all could learn from. No pressure. Just do it really good, k?

"to be neurotic is human, to be psychotic is sinful...."
Paul Tillich

PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 10/18/2001 4:48 PM (GMT -6)

quote:
ciberbuns

?

(I won't go there...)

PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890

Posted 10/18/2001 4:53 PM (GMT -6)

I'm fine on the Zizioulas book.

But this threw me: "There is some pretty nominalistic leanings over there on the Eastern side, eh?" Show the the "nom-y!"

Or where you being

Note: I'm off my Mac, and on a PC -- my wife's influence. Hense, all the "art."

Your friend,

PotOnWheel

P.S. Modes, navigate on that orlapubs site over to the other half, and find out what that guy used to do for a day job -- languages Doc at a politechnic in Berlin; but originally from the sothern Mid-Atlantic states in the US. You'll be wow-ed, and glad for the surf.

Edited by - PotOnWheel on 10/18/2001 9:56:43 PM

PotOnWheel
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Posted 10/22/2001 4:29 PM (GMT -6)

Modes?

Modes of Thought
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Posted 10/23/2001 7:51 AM (GMT -6)

Sorry POW, I've been crazy busy, building a garage before the snow flies. I will be back ASAP. It's nice to feel missed though,

"to be neurotic is human, to be psychotic is sinful...."
Paul Tillich

Modes of Thought
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Total Posts : 817

Posted 10/27/2001 5:32 PM (GMT -6)

[warning, severe weather ahead, tailspin and crash-landing predicted.]

Okay, I'm back....

Here's the gist:

I am NOT becoming a realist qua doc, per se. I am simply attempting to do what POW suggested and that is to work through the categories as a way of getting certain thoughts thunk.

My question is rooted in the beginning of this thread. Do we dare confess the ambiguities involved in all of our abductions? Is there a basic continuity that I am just unaware of from one thought category to the next or is it really that abduction amounts to a certain leap of faith (be it good faith or otherwise)?

The example I raised has to do with these various concepts: Love, God, necessity, actuality, possibility, freedom.

They can be organized as necessarily personal/vs. not:
Personal (by necessity): love, freedom
not: God, actuality, possibility, necessity

Or they could be organized by dogmatic vs. metaphysical:
dogmatic: Love, God
metaphysical:necessity, possibility, freedom, actuality

Or they could be sorted by necessarily ethical vs. not:
ethical: love, actuality, possibility, freedom
not: God, necessity

My point here is, how the terms are used in relation to the others is very important and what category we are considering the terms under is equally so. Meph and I are wondering about the second set above. In metaphysics proper, we need not talk about Love, nor even God, we can say, first cause, or something of that nature. What is of concern is the structures at play. But that is an aside, perhaps Mephi will pick it up.

My question is more basic. If at every turn, I have to consider things under the aspect of some category or other, why think that my considerations warrant anything like "realistic" representations of how things ARE? (Assuming ALL the pertinent categories are needed in proper coordination with one another to have a realistic view) Here's where the nominalist in me says, "Grab hold of what is particular. At least that is a peice of concrete data that you now know you have to account for in your thinking." I have a difficult time moving far beyond that level of analysis. It feels dishonest to me. I am not saying others are actually being dishonest in doing so, I just feel very obligated to account for the particulars as such. It's an orientation issue, I think.

Meph, you brought up "templates" as an analogy for universals. Fine, but again why should God need templates? When do the templates actually get used? In what manner? Through other events? Directly? What are we even saying here? Let's say God has a "human template". What role does this template play in the birth of the next child to come into this world? I don't get it. It seems like the continuity is located in the emergence (genetics surely suggests this), not in the ongoing superimposition of some template. Maybe we could say the continuity is located in the origin, that's fine, but then let's talk about continuity stemming from emergence, not a "template". Even if we say that God's "ideal" is the template, what do we do with the particulars? Are we really all just inferior chips off the non-actual block? Even if we speak prolepticly about God drawing all things unto Godself, fine, but where's the template? If we accept something like this template langauge, and we are measured against such a template, then finitude itself is a sort of "fallenness". This seems problematic.

The hope I have for doc's assertions (regarding the question of Love in metaphysics) is really all grounded in something like the anthropological argument. [Which is really existential at heart.] We need certain things, and we see that needs do not occur that are not in principle "meet-able". So now I have moved from metaphysics to existential categories. Is that legit? Why? I am actually lamenting the LACK of continuity in how we use reason, not attacking reason itself.

Can anyone see yet why I am so interested in a thoroughly Christian Existentialism? The other "sciences" don't hold up. Psychology has to hand itself over to religious categories (which are ultimately existential categories) if it is to move beyond a certain point. This is true of other fields of interest as well. Existentialism at least has the advantage of being able to parasiticly borrow from other fields by virtue of the various relations themselves. This is illustrated by the way that this board, as a conversational community, helps bring in new data to consider from our various experiences. But what is the point of contact? Our experiences with each other in this conversation. But what holds us together? Our common conviction about Christian faith, or at least our decision to engage in a conversation so rooted.

What bothers me still is that as we make the moves we feel we need to make for "progress" in our own lives of faith, how transferrable should we assume the many abductions we have made actually are for others here? This is not a fundamental suspicion that reality is not "one" so much as it is a recogniton that our paths are so many and so diverse. And the world is only getting bigger in terms of who's going to be in the conversation.

A pragmatic thought: our church is currently working hard and praying hard in the direction of being a church that is unifying across all human divisions. Now, people like to do church the WAY they like to do church

. So this becomes a very important question: isn't our ecclesiology tied in with the rest of our theology and especially our pnuematology? So what do we do when we come to a point of conflict between various cultures/theologies/anthropologies/ecclesiologies/pnuematologies, etc. in the same worshipping body? Who's got it right? Well, of course, its the old white guys, right? I mean, they've had it right since the beginning of time. (Gagging) NO, its the most oppressed people, they are always in God's favor, right? So maybe they have the answers? No. Well, now what? Is there a way to DO theology so that it is flexible enough to accomodate the diversity that the Church is called to reflect AND wholly remain faithful to the heartbeat? Yes. But it must center around the person of Jesus Christ. Even in getting into our ideas about Love and superimposing those onto God and then supposing God obeys this structure, we are asking for trouble. WHAT does love look like in this particular mess or that one?

Ya know what all this makes me think? MY GOD! Have mercy and tell us what we need to do. Make it a matter of obedience.

God reveals Godself to each of us in Jesus Christ. But our "visions" of Jesus are not the same. I have admired the way Greg handles this pragmaticly so far, just press on, and bump into each other for a while, but in true deference submit to the vision the other has while retaining one's own. Jus' mix it up. Now. I like that, I see God in that. But how can we do theology in or like that?

"Christianly understood, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth. Despite all modern philosophy, there is an infinite difference here..." SK

Modes of Thought
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Posted 10/27/2001 5:32 PM (GMT -6)

Mephi2K
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Posted 10/28/2001 3:13 AM (GMT -6)

Modes,

Here's a question. Do you see any type of realism view as ultimately DEPERSONALIZING? I ask this question because it seems to me that your quest is not so much for "particulars" (over and against "universals") just for the sake of themselves, but because you believe that particulars are the ONLY true source for any type of personhood. I could be wrong, but that's the impression I'm getting. At base, isn't existentialism primarily a way to affirm and assert PERSONHOOD and the virtues usually conceptualized in personhood (ie individuality, experience, relationality, etc)?

Perhaps I keep thinking of the old Hegel/Kierkegaard thing.

Love God. Love People. Love Truth. Dedicate your all to that which you love.

Edited by - Mephi2K on 10/28/2001 08:13:54 AM

Modes of Thought
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817

Posted 10/29/2001 11:27 AM (GMT -6)

quote:

Modes,

Here's a question. Do you see any type of realism view as ultimately DEPERSONALIZING? I ask this question because it seems to me that your quest is not so much for "particulars" (over and against "universals") just for the sake of themselves, but because you believe that particulars are the ONLY true source for any type of personhood. I could be wrong, but that's the impression I'm getting. At base, isn't existentialism primarily a way to affirm and assert PERSONHOOD and the virtues usually conceptualized in personhood (ie individuality, experience, relationality, etc)?

Perhaps I keep thinking of the old Hegel/Kierkegaard thing.

Love God. Love People. Love Truth. Dedicate your all to that which you love.

Edited by - Mephi2K on 10/28/2001 08:13:54 AM

Say I agreed with you here, then what? I think you are on to something. I really appreciate your taking the time to sort through my chaos....

How would you encouage me toward realism if your assessment is correct? What IS personal about realism? Your right, I am not into particulars for the sake of particulars.

"Christianly understood, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth. Despite all modern philosophy, there is an infinite difference here..." SK

GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted 10/30/2001 12:38 PM (GMT -6)

Ahhh, so THAT's it! Way to go Meph. I've never quite understood what Modes had against realism. But I think you hit it. Perhaps his absorption into Kierkegaard has caused him to fight off realism for the same reason Kierkegaard spent his life fighting off Hegelianism. He's afriad of the individual being swallowed up.

Light goes on.

Modes, if THAT is your concern, you're enemy is not REALISM, but IDEALISM. Idealism, in the form you're concerned with, identifies "the real" with "an idea" which the adherent believes he or she knows. In this perspective, what is REALLY REAL is what conforms to "the idea." Hence, the surd of particularity is swallowed up in "the idea."

Realism does not assert this. It does not deny the reality of individuals or particulars. It simply affirms that these aren't the ONLY realities. Wholes have a reality of their own. (INdeed, every individual is a whole that unites parts, and every part is itself a whole. The scale goes all the way up and down. And its ALL real. That's all).

Help ya?

Doc

"Three is the magic number, oh yes it is, it's the Magic Number" - De La Soul

Modes of Thought
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817

Posted 10/30/2001 1:01 PM (GMT -6)

quote:

Ahhh, so THAT's it! Way to go Meph. I've never quite understood what Modes had against realism. But I think you hit it. Perhaps his absorption into Kierkegaard has caused him to fight off realism for the same reason Kierkegaard spent his life fighting off Hegelianism. He's afriad of the individual being swallowed up.

Light goes on.

Modes, if THAT is your concern, you're enemy is not REALISM, but IDEALISM. Idealism, in the form you're concerned with, identifies "the real" with "an idea" which the adherent believes he or she knows. In this perspective, what is REALLY REAL is what conforms to "the idea." Hence, the surd of particularity is swallowed up in "the idea."

Realism does not assert this. It does not deny the reality of individuals or particulars. It simply affirms that these aren't the ONLY realities. Wholes have a reality of their own. (INdeed, every individual is a whole that unites parts, and every part is itself a whole. The scale goes all the way up and down. And its ALL real. That's all).

Help ya?

Doc

"Three is the magic number, oh yes it is, it's the Magic Number" - De La Soul

Yup.

See that wasn't so hard, now was it?

Meph, you are my new personal hero (in the background is playing "did you ever know that your my....").

Sorry doc. Ya got bumped.

(just kiddin' you'll always rank up there

)

Actually, Pia knows the truth, she's the real deal.

I am gonna hafta go back over this stuff and make sure that distinction works things out, but I can see already that it definitely helps. Dang, I knew I should have taken some formal philosophy classes! Or at least soemthing that covers the various positions available epistemologically.

Thanks you two, for putting up with my confusion. I guess this means we agree more than not again, eh? What fun is that?

In spite of the jabs, I still say SK is the man. Just look at all the quotes he's getting on this board! Very cool. I'll bet there are very few other boards who quote such cool people as SK.

BTW: New SK class starting in Jan. (at WHC) reading through "Practice in Christianity" again. So, if you think your a Christian, come and weigh in and see how you fair in the light of a REALLY rigorous proposal of what it means to be a Christian.

Should be fun.

I'm guessing I still have some questions left over about abduction though. I mean, we talk about "justified truth claims", what do we as far as "justified abduction proposals/attempts"?

"Christianly understood, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth. Despite all modern philosophy, there is an infinite difference here..." SK

Mephi2K
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 10/31/2001 3:19 AM (GMT -6)

Modes,

I JUST checked this out. Glad I was able to help in some small way. Nuttin but LOVE for ya, buddy!

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