The flag of ignorance

I heard this somewhere, I think, in a Christian apologist's podcast, arguing about absolute truth:

If everything is relative, then this statement is relative, too.

That stuck with me for the longest time because it is a solid shelter in the wake of Postmodernism.

But no, it's not about Postmodernism. I found that people I talk with (or others in a certain social media) are simply using Relativism because they don't bother to find out, really. 

A friend expressed his astonishment when I was reading a book related to Zen Buddhism:

"But, aren't you a Christian?"
"Yes, but what's wrong with finding out more about other beliefs?"
(Shakes head) "My other Christian friends simply wouldn't do that."

That, I don't understand. How can you defend your own belief if you don't know about others'? Now, I can only attribute that to laziness. Postmodernism is indeed one of those terms that is bloated beyond recognition and no one can offer a succinct definition of it anymore. It's a hand-waving, sweeping-under-the-rug thing. I don't bother to find out, so to cut the conversation short, I shove it to that trashbin of meanings, Postmodernism.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is a striking parallel with God of the Gaps thinking -- I don't understand and God is the totality of what's mysterious, what I don't understand. The danger of this, of course, your God would become smaller and smaller as you understand more, like Santa Claus is becoming less and less real when you are growing up.

Seekers of Truth, don't rally under the flag of ignorance.

Did You Know It's Christmas?

When I was on the way home from the Christmas Eve service, I heard this song again: 

Someone in the car then remarked that it makes him a little uncomfortable, asking Mary repeatedly did-you-know because she did know, albeit partially, about these things.

Well, I think that's a-little-too-matter-of-fact way of looking at it. The way I look at it:

First, I believe the questions are somewhat rhetorical -- indeed Mary knew; the angels told her some things, even though most likely she knew not the full implications of what was about to happen to her. Which brings me to the second: the tone of the question is not interrogative but jubilant. Like the chorus in a play, we are called to sing along the heavenly hosts, eager to share our own excitement, the generations down the line who have been blessed, saying Amen to Mary's Magnificat: I shall be called blessed (Luke 1:46-55). In effect, the lyricist also calls us to put ourselves in Mary's shoes, sharing her joys of being chosen as an instrument of God. In fact, moments into the song, the word that immediately occurred to me was vicarious -- in other words, we are called to take part in the Magnificat, transcending the timeline gap and experience what Mary experienced, particularly her joy, vicariously. This perspective (heavenly host singalong) is certainly unusual and as there is a dash of dramatic irony too, since we already know what is going to happen, Mary didn't. All in all, it makes you think. Literary spices are useless if the ingredients are stale in the first place. 

So ponder. Sing. Don't eat too much. Did you know you are going to have a blessed Christmas?

Deliverance

Among the many Christmas songs, this particular line leaves a deep impression on me:

Mary did you know?
...
This child that you've delivered
will soon deliver you.
-- Mark Lowry, Mary Did You Know?

So, let us remember amidst all these Christmas celebrations -- we always think that the world delivered Jesus, when it's really the other way around: Jesus once delivered the world into existence and He will deliver the world once again into salvation.

So, let me deliver the Christmas greetings to fellow Christians:

Jesus was once delivered in a stable,
of uncomfort, of uncleanness
But this year
May He be delivered in your heart
Knowing that He will deliver you someday

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

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? 

Paradoxes of Omnipotence and Freedom I

Listverse has just released a list of paradoxes. They are excellent sources of philosophical discussion, but alas, when it involves religion, the paradox in question has to be resolved, or at least has its illusory contradiction laid bare. 

There are two paradoxes which may confuse the Christian. The first being the paradox of omnipotence, which is the first item on Listverse's list. The other being the paradox of freedom, not on the list.

I shall try to touch on them at length.

Of omnipotence:

A classical problem:

Can God create a rock so heavy He can't lift it?

Answering yes or no would imply incapability of either creating or lifting the stone, and assuming omnipotence is the "capability to do all things", this is a paradox.

As Utahraptor said here, this can be generalised like thus:

If you can do anything, then you can do things that prevent you from doing other things, and therefore, you can't do anything.

In simpler terms: if you have the powers to do everything, you would have the power to strip yourself of all powers included, then you don't have any power. Clearly, this has to mean that there is a fundamental error in our notion of omnipotence, because if we follow the logic of the paradox, omnipotence itself may lead to impotence.

Omnipotence, then, has to be redefined so as the definition is such that it excludes contradictions to itself, unlike our definition above. In turn, we have to narrow down the list of the powers of the omnipotent. This may sound absurd if we relate back that the omnipotent Being is God. This has to mean that God has limitations of what He can do.

Fair enough, but it is even absurder if you don't limit on what God can do, for instance: God can sin. Well, no, of course not. Does that mean God is not all-powerful? Quite the opposite. 

God cannot sin. If we generalise this, we can say: God cannot contradict himself. That would solve the rock problem. The answer is a simple 'no', simply because God cannot contradict himself.

Thus, the source of the paradox is on the inherently contradictory definition of omnipotence itself. The definition cannot be all-encompassing, because some powers would contradict others.

Paradox of freedom, in due course.

Monotheism and Causa Prima

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.
-- Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

When a friend ask me a while back: "Why can there be only one God?", I was taken aback a little. Sure, I am a Christian, believing in monotheism, but it had never crossed my mind why it is so. This was not ignorance but more like in my mind the inescapable conclusion is that God can only be one.

The argument I thus offered my friend was the causa prima argument: 

Look at the world as a series of causes and effects with innumerable branches. An event is preceded by a cause, which is in turn preceded by another cause, and so on. Up the branches, we inevitably have to come to a point where there is a single cause that itself is not caused. This cause, or entity if you like, is called Causa Prima, the first cause.

To me, the extrapolation until every event is reduced to singularity of cause is inevitable. Animals cannot extrapolate far enough. An old dog-and-cat joke: If a dog is taken care of, it would deem the one taking care of him the Master. If a cat is taken care of, it would deem itself the Master. 

Humans are then a little better. We see something greater than ourselves, then we extrapolate upwards to find God at the zenith of infinity. If we ever go along the way of arrogance of the cat, our rationale would tell us that a lot of things are beyond our control, therefore we ourselves cannot be gods. 

By the way, the causa prima argument provides answer to chicken-and-egg question:

A chicken originates from an egg; an egg, a chicken; and so on. Sounds awfully familiar to cause-and-effect picture? This obviously has to stop somewhere up the origination branches. Simply: God creates the first pair of chickens. If you cringe at the word 'God', fine, you can replace the causa prima as anything else that causes the first pair of chickens. Evolution from another species, for instance. You should note however, that this causa prima is not the Causa Prima. It only is as far as existence of chickens is concerned. Regarding the existence of everything, subsuming chickens, the Causa Prima can only be a Supreme Being, with intelligence and consciousness.

You may realise that our extrapolation to find God is quite feeble. We have the concept of 'infinity' but it so taxes our mind when we try to rationalise it. The picture of God is then a fuzzy one, One whose personage we can only deduce from the ramifications down the branches of cause-and-effect. Religions then, can be seen as the attempt to illuminate on the identity and motives of this fuzzy God. This definition may not apply to some religions, like Buddhism where there is no God. Again, it depends on what religion means. Some people do not classify Buddhism as religion, but merely a way of living. If you look at the world's religions, monotheistic ones are surprisingly scarce: Zoroastrianism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Some might even group the latter three as Abrahamic religions collectively. 

I should highlight that most religions view this attempt to uncover who God is anthropocentrally. Do good deeds, accumulate enough points to gain the entry to Salvation. In Christianity the picture is a little different: God understands that Man's picture of Him is fuzzy, so He went and revealed Himself, his personage, purposes, and ultimately His authorship of Salvation in Jesus Christ.

If you say doing good is enough for salvation, you have gone the path of arrogance of the cat. Who are we to say that our moral standard is good enough, that our 'good' is truly good? The Bible mentions several discrepancies between our own moral standard and that of God. If someone slap you in the cheek, you would be entitled to retaliate with another slap, an eye for an eye, right? No, Jesus said, give him your other cheek. You are entitled to love your friend and hate your enemy, right? No, Jesus said, love your enemy. That illustrates how Man finds himself deep in the mud of corruption, even his own moral is already corrupted; he cannot hoist himself to the higher ground. The only salvation is to reach the outstretched Hand coming down from above. 

Doing good then is not the requirement of salvation, rather it is the consequence of it.

Fuzzy?

Merry X'mas!

By the way, ever wondered how on earth 'Christ' is abbreviated to 'X'?

Well, I myself used to think that 'X' kind of looks like a cross, doesn't it? And Christ was nailed on a cross...

That's nice and well, but 'X' here is actually the Greek letter 'chi'. 'Christ' in Greek is Χριστός (Christos). So, 'chi' in X'mas is actually Christ's initial.

On another note, a church I used to attend actually had Χρ inscribed on the pulpit. Another had IHS (iota-eta-sigma). I didn't realise that they are actually Christograms until quite recently. Some Christian I am.

Well, you learn something new everyday. Merry Christmas! 

God of the Gaps

Scientific pursuits reveal answers to many questions mankind asks. While fresh facts are amassed by seconds, it is arguable whether science has brought us closer to the truth.
What is truth? Back to the ancient philosophical question.
A Christian scientist once remarked that scientists are climbing their way to the top of a mountain. They overcome the obstacles one by one - but when they are about to remove the last obstacles near the summit, they find theologians have been sitting there for centuries awaiting them.
Assuming that science is bringing us closer to the truth, the peak of the mountain, they may never reach it since at the summit it is God - and God is not supposed to be comprehensible since He is God; Christian philosophers would say.
While this speaks about the greatness of God and such, scientists then may counter it with the accusation that Faith is simply filling out the gaps that science has not yet been unable to fill. This may be true to both believers and scientists but the problem lies in whether Science is eventually able to fill those gaps?
If it is able to, then Faith turns out to be a deception and is merely a temporary filling of the gaps, waiting for Science to push it out of the gaps and replace it.
If it is not, then Faith is valid; it explains the unexplainable - it is supposed to be.
Yet another problem arises: How would we know whether Science is able to fill those gaps?
Exactly. We wouldn't know. We don't even know whether we are at the right track to approach the truth in the first place.
On this issue pure scientists and believers are still divided. Yet many people simply embrace Science and Faith. Indeed, if seen another way, the two can be thought as complements. One explains the explainable and the other explains the unexplainable. I personally think that Science can only done up to a limit and the rest it is up to faith. Science is human tool after all. Humans are limited. It follows that so is Science.
On another note, the concept of 'god of the gaps' is sometimes misused. At times things unexplainable are quick to be dismissed as part of divine knowledge. It is true that we are limited but where that limit is we are still uncertain.
So we have to be aware that it is a spectrum. You just have to choose where to stand. The wise will of course choose "everything in moderation".

Paradox of the Trinity

In rhetoric, prominent contradictory figures of speech are: paradox, oxymoron and antithesis. Lesser known are contradictio interminus and anachronism.

Let's focus on paradox.
Many dictionaries don't define paradox properly. Let's see one:
par·a·dox (pār'ə-dŏks') Pronunciation Key
n.

1. A seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true: the paradox that standing is more tiring than walking.
2. One exhibiting inexplicable or contradictory aspects: "The silence of midnight, to speak truly, though apparently a paradox, rung in my ears" (Mary Shelley).
3. An assertion that is essentially self-contradictory, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises.
4. A statement contrary to received opinion.

"paradox." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.

The key points to the meaning of paradox are 'seemingly contradictory' and 'nevertheless true'. However, how it is it true but contradictory? In my own understanding, the contradiction in a paradox lie on different planes (Yes, Margaret Atwood again, context is all). Thus, they are only 'seemingly' contradictory but they cannot be compared in the first place because of different contexts. For example consider my last post titled 'Paradox'. The paradox is obvious: I hate you but I love you. At a glance, the conflict is glaring - but if you think deeper it is fairly obvious that when the hatred arises hypothetically, when the person addressed were to disappear or the like.
So how about the paradox of the Holy Trinity? Three in One, One in Three.
From literary and philosophical point of views, again we can argue that the conflicting elements belong to different planes, different contexts. There are many famous analogies concerning the Trinity. I shall list some and also explain the limitations of each:
1) The father, the driver and the businessman
So imagine your father. When he is driving a car he is a driver. When he is dealing with his business, he is a businessman. Filially, he is your father. Voilà! Three but one, ain't it?
No.
In fact, for theologians, this is considered one of the weakest or even misleading analogy.
This is because it is wrong. 'Father' is one person while the Trinity is three different entities. When Jesus was baptised, Holy Spirit came down in the form of a dove and there was a voice from the heaven. So there are three persons. However, this analogy is correct in saying that there are different roles in in the Trinity (But, isn't this obvious? There are three Persons, of course three different roles).
2) The Shamrock leaf, a triangle
Three leaflets but one leaf. Three sides but one triangle. Though depicting the separateness and equality of the three entities, it doesn't highlight their distinctiveness.
A triangle might be more favourable since the concept is more coherent. If one sees a broken Shamrock leaf, he can tell that it is a broken Shamrock leaf. But once a triangle, say lose one of its sides, you can't call it a triangle, can you?
3) Three lines stacked
Draw a line. Draw another line of the same length superimposed with the first one. Draw a third line also superimposed. So how many lines now? Three or one?
I like the third analogy because it best reflects the confusion caused by the paradox. In (1) and (2) the contradictions are not so obvious anymore and the paradoxical meaning disappears.
In any case, the confusion is what should be at the conclusion. Jastrow once said something like this: scientists have reached the summit where they have to remove the last obstacle to the highest peak and they are greeted with the theologians already sitting there for centuries.
What I mean is that God is incomprehensible, that's why He is God. If we can comprehend God, then He is not God at all. So the final obstacle is the incomprehensible God.
So let's see a paradox from a theological point of view.
Ever heard of dual behaviour of light or electron? Light and electron both behave as waves and particles. If you understand physics, this is clearly a paradox. But the important thing is that the contradiction is there because of our current knowledge is limited to comprehend it fully. The light or electron in itself do not have contradicting elements or else they would not exist.
So it is with God. To us the Trinity seems like a a paradox but it is so because our human knowledge is limited to fully comprehend God.
So: If you are trying to fully comprehend the incomprehensible God, you are being paradoxical.