God and Personification (Addendum)

Just a bit of juxtaposition. Divine simplicity says that God is simple. On the other hand, Man is a composite, which is nicely captured in this excerpt:

The phenomenon called 'I'
Is a single green illumination
Of a presupposed organic
alternating current lamp
(a composite body of each
and every transparent spectre)
The single illumination
Of karma's alternating current lamp
Remains alight without fail
Flickering unceasingly, restlessly
Together with the sights of the land and all else
(the light is preserved... the lamp itself is lost)
(the totality flickers in time with me
sensing all that I sense coincidentally)
For these twenty-two months
Brought together in paper and mineral ink
Passage by passage of light and shade
They are truths as they are drawings of the spirit
-- Kenji Miyazawa, Spring and Asura

Apologia pro semita meo

Or defense for my (university) course. Or something like that.

Looking at my writing alone, one probably cannot tell that I am actually a chemist-in-training. 

I have been told for ever that I belong to the science stream. I suppose I do. I always excel in the sciences, my maths is not so bad, and am mostly a creature of logic. Nevertheless I have always suspected that I have some penchant for the Arts, if only an inkling of it. Take my linguistic pedantry; it's been there since I was at junior high level. 

A former teacher said that a person should not be pigeon-holed. That is something I'll always remember, since it confirms my aforementioned suspicion. To label a person as science person or humanities person is just shallow thinking, Of course, it is alright to categorise for certain purposes, say, for education streaming or screening potential employees, for example. But many cannot see the underlying complexities beneath the labels, and end up seeing people as caricatures of sorts; inadvertently oversimplifying and degrading them.

So, despite my proficiencies in seemingly mutually exclusive areas, I ended up in the science. Why? Because, as those who have gone through it can tell you, you can only choose a narrow area. I should digress a little bit to describe my education philosophy. One of my students asked me before, why he has to do English, or Maths, or other subjects, for that matter. I answered, because a person has to be equipped with all areas of knowledge until certain level. At least junior high level, or if you can, high school level, in my opinion. This level is arguable, but I think the paramount criteria are: 1) It is enough to get by in life, 2) It gives enough glimpses of the area in consideration to stimulate interested students to specialise in it. You have to specialise, simply because the amount of human knowledge is too enormous that one cannot know everything in-depth. This vantage view of education is illustrated nicely here.

Next question, why science not other things? (Note that I do not differentiate between physics, chemistry, or biology here, simply because just as you should not pigeon-hole people, you should not compartmentalise science, if you can afford not to). Take a look at my process of elimination. Take into account my nature: I am quite pragmatic, but not shallow; and most of all, am a pursuer of knowledge. I crossed off the humanities, since I doubt I can make a decent living out of it; besides I have greater talents for science. I crossed off business since I do not want to end up as money-making machine. I have read accounts of people feeling empty despite having great wealth (more like, from literary works. Literature is a lens on humanity, more on that next time). I thought to myself, why wasting time learning about laws that can change. Perhaps such is the nature of the said emptiness, the accomplishment of nothing. Another reason that I can put up quite eloquently, if I may say so myself, is that the financial and economic systems are just creations of man, that is, artificial and transient. The laws of nature that science seeks after, on the other hand, are enduring, and will be there as long as this world as we know it exists. To this, a friend countered: but money makes the world goes round. To that, I quipped: perhaps, but I know angular momentum sure does.

Why not engineering? I have already revealed a little that I am interested in the inner working of the universe, more so than applying it into design, to produce technology. I am more interested to be at the frontiers of knowledge, and make a little dent on the current boundary. But the very fundamentals are also not for me. In science and engineering tree, maths is the root; physics, lower stem; chemistry, upper stem; biology, branches; engineering, fruits. I chose chemistry because of its centrality; there is balance between the fundamentals and the applications.

Academia, then. First, I enjoy teaching. Second, as I said, I want to be at the frontiers of knowledge, so I have to do research. I have to admit that the prestige of professorship is also quite alluring. But a darker reason is that I am just plain dastardly. I want to deal with the world from the the lofty ivory tower, dealing with living indirectly, cocooned by the scientific bubble. Say what you may, but I am of the opinion that there is a need for scientists to be separated from the 'world' at large, even though the separation is artificial. In The Glass Bead Game, Herman Hesse depicts a world where this separation is even made geographical. Castalia is the central of academia, much like Vatican is the central of Catholicism. Castalia is called 'aristocracy of the spirit', which has an inkling of elitist connotation. Yes, the separation is unnatural, nevertheless necessary, to protect the scholars from 'money, fame, rank'. Not for everyone, but I feel that it is for me. Deep down, I am just fragile: I don't have the ruggedness to take on the world by its horns; it will break my spirit.

Ultimately, whatever field you are pursuing, keep in mind your purpose. Mine is the pursuit of knowledge, truths that are everlasting. Then to pass on this knowledge for generations to come. 

That you are here — that life exists, and identity; 
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
-- Walt Whitman

God and Personification

I used to wonder why we Christians say that 'God is love', not 'God is loving'. 'God is loving' is fine, because 'loving' is an adjective, so it is a modifier, explaining the attribute of God being full of love (it seems that the linguist has always been dormant in me). Well, now that I am a student of literature, I found that it is just a personification, a literary technique. A quick recapitulation, as I wrote before:

When the first letter of a word is capitalised, it is like a name of a person, so we say that the word is personified. Other notable examples would be 'Mother Nature' and 'Death'. Think of those two words carefully -- if you are imaginative maybe you will conjure images of benevolent mother and grim reaper. So you see, personification firstly changes the status of the intangible to the tangible. Fear, nature, death -- those are abstract concepts and are difficult to picture. What personification does is giving them bodies -- embodying them in real objects, bringing them from imaginary to real plane. What's more, they are not just tangible objects, but persons. With personalities, with emotions, with will, with mind; it's a Being.

Then it makes sense. God is, then, not only loving, but the very embodiment of love. Seen in this light, John 1:1 also makes a lot of sense:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
-- Jn. 1:1

'The Word' is translated from the Greek word logos [λόγος], from which we derive logic and all our -logies; basically, knowledge. Here we can see also that God is also the embodiment of knowledge itself.
But it should be noted that this is not, and should not be regarded as, simple personification.
First, as the name suggests, personification seeks to make a person out of something, to the level that other persons, that is, we, can relate to. We borrow the attributes of 'Mother', for example, to describe Nature; something we can easily conjure images from. Sometimes, personification also borrows infallibility of humans, subject to passions and other things. This, of course, cannot be true for God, since an infallible God is not God.
Second, personification is a subset of metaphor, a literary technique. But when we say 'God is love', or 'the Word was God', we don't mean metaphorically, but literally: God is the very embodiment of all His attributes. In other words, the Being God is, is identical to His attributes, literally. When Moses asked God for His name, God replied: "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14). God just is.
For these two reasons, this concept is, to be sure, not just simple personification. This concept can be summed up as divine simplicity, originating from Thomas Aquinas, or, some may argue, the ancient Greek philosophers.
I will leave the more theological and philosophical discussions to the Wikipedia page and the references therein. Be warned that divine simplicity, despite its name, is not simple. Goes without saying.

Paradoxes of Omnipotence and Freedom II

...in serving be free.
-- Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, p.74

Freedom, then.

I held out writing this one to finish reading Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus. One of their major themes is freedom, or more accurately, the paradox thereof.

Let's put aside free will aside for a moment. Let's deal with the more general concept of freedom first. The paradox, in Christian context, is this: We often speak of being liberated from the slavery of sin. But Paul called himself the slave (doulos) of Christ (Rom. 1:1). Certainly, no man can serve two masters (Mt. 6:24). Though the latter's context is about serving God or Mammon, we can see that we are under the slavery of sin or God, never neither. Some questions: Is there, then, true freedom? If the said true freedom means being free from sin and God, does that mean necessarily a good thing? Do we really want such true freedom?

What does freedom really mean? I find it necessary to quote at length (emphasis mine):

After the principal's address, while everyone was on the way to the bravely bedecked dining hall, Knecht approached the Master with a question, "The principal," he said, "told us how things are outside of Castalia, in the ordinary schools and colleges. He said that the students at the universities study for 'free' professions. If I understood him rightly, these are professions we do not even have here in Castalia. What is the meaning of that? Why are just those professions called 'free'? And why should we Castalians be excluded from them?"
The Magister Musicae drew the young man aside and stood with him under one of the giant trees. An almost sly smile puckered the skin around his eyes into little wrinkles as he replied: "Your name is Knecht, my friend, and perhaps for that reason the word 'free' is so alluring for you. But do not take it too seriously in this case. When the non-Castalians speak of the free professions, the word may sound very serious and even inspiring. But when we use it, we intend it ironically. Freedom exists in those professions only to the extent that the student chooses the profession himself. That produces an appearance of freedom, although in most cases the choice is made less by the student than by his family, and many a father would sooner bite off his tongue than really allow his son free choice. But perhaps that is a slander; let us drop this objection. Let us say that the freedom exists, but it is limited to the one unique act of choosing the profession. Afterward all freedom is over. When he begins his studies at the university, the doctor, lawyer, or engineer is forced into an extremely rigid curriculum which ends with a series of examinations. If he passes them, he receives his license and can thereafter pursue his profession in seeming freedom. But in doing so he becomes the slave of base powers; he is dependent on success, on money, on his ambition, his hunger for fame, on whether or not people like him. He must submit to elections, must earn money, must take part in the ruthless competition of castes, families, political parties, newspapers. In return he has the freedom to become successful and well-to-do, and to be hated by the unsuccessful, or vice versa. For the elite pupil and later member of the Order, everything is the other way around. He does not 'choose' any profession. He does not imagine that he is a better judge of his own talents than are his teachers. He accepts the place and the function within the hierarchy that his superiors choose for him–if, that is, the matter is not reversed and the qualities, gifts and faults of the pupil compel the teachers to send him to one place or another. In the midst of this seeming unfreedom every electus enjoys the greates imaginable freedom after his early courses. Whereas the man in the 'free' professions must submit to a narrow and rigid course of studies with rigid examinations in order to train for his future career, the electus, as soon as he begins studying independently, enjoys so much freedom that there are many who all their lives choose the most abstruse and frequently almost foolish studies, and may continue without hindrance as long as their conduct does not degenerate, The natural teacher is employed as teacher, the natural educator as educator, the natural translator as translator; each, as if of his own accord, finds his way to the place in which he can serve, and in serving be free. Moreover, for the rest of his life he is saved from that 'freedom' of career which means such terrible slavery. He knows nothing of the struggle for money, fame, rank; he recognizes no parties, no dichotomy, between the individual and the office, between what is private and what is public; he feels no dependence upon success. Now do you see, my son, that when we speak of the free professions, the word 'free' is meant rather humorously."
-- Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, pp.73-74

Leverkühn suffers from the excessive freedom of post-Romantic subjectivity, which paradoxically has at this stage in musical history itself become an oppressive convention; and from a hyper-intelligent technical grasp which allows him instantly to see through every musical trick used by other composers – or hinself. What he craves is a compelling new order that will lift the paradoxical burden of freedom, and a new primitive simplicity that will be a refuge from his own sophistication.
-- T. J. Reed, Introduction, Doctor Faustus, p.ix

Germany is free, in so far as one may apply to a land prostrate and proscribed.
-- Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus, p.518

You can't miss the unmistakably contemptuous and Aristotelian-golden-mean tone everytime freedom is mentioned. Too much freedom can't be good. Freedom may just be an illusion of it.

The first passage may sound socialistic. Let's not go into that, but you can watch this TEDTalk instead where the speaker talks, among other things, of freedom of choice in once-socialist countries.

I should just conclude this post in thoughtful tone with my opinion on free will and predestination:

Some might argue that predestination precludes free will; it is deteministic. This is not necessarily the case. It just happens that God has free will, too. You are free to choose, so is He. Men try all the time to turn the tides of history; if God chooses to dip His finger in the flow of Time, how would you argue that He can't?