Thread: Incarnation Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Yorick (# 12169) on :
 
Does anyone understand* Incarnation? I read on the Hot Jesus thread that He was 'both fully divine and fully human'. This seems illogical unless you make the case uniquely exceptional and inexplicable, but I doubt that would have two millennia of carriage in the human imagination, so I must be missing something very obvious here. What's the deal?

* as a curious adult of moderate intelligence but theological illiteracy.

Ta.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
It isn't logical or work-out-able. In fact, it is counter-intuiative and impossible.

What does it mean to believe in a creator God and then claim that he can be a man? The thing is impossible to understand - a man being quite a different thing to a creator God.
 
Posted by Yorick (# 12169) on :
 
How does that work for you? I wonder if Christians are happier to live with such paradoxes than atheists.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
Oh yes, Christianity is a religion of paradox! Indeed, it can be argued that one of its strengths is in asking people to believe two mutually contradictory things.

In some ways one untruth can be ignored, but two contradictory untruths make a thing seem more believable - because why and how could you make something up that sounds mutually contradictory?
 
Posted by Yorick (# 12169) on :
 
Well, because you have to explain your claims somehow.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Well, because you have to explain your claims somehow.
Complex ideas by their nature often sound more believable than simple ones.
 
Posted by Yorick (# 12169) on :
 
Quite.

I just find it hard to believe that billions of Christians can live with this headfuck. It's kind of crucial, if you'll forgive the usage.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Quite.

I just find it hard to believe that billions of Christians can live with this headfuck. It's kind of crucial, if you'll forgive the usage.
Yes, it is critical.

I think partly it is because it is both a novel and a beautiful idea - God living with us.
 
Posted by TheAlethiophile (# 16870) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Does anyone understand* Incarnation?

* as a curious adult of moderate intelligence but theological illiteracy.

Ta.
I would posit the answer is no. We certainly don't understand it in the way we understand some other things.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to express the idea somehow (please forgive the double negative). I certainly think that a good deal of thought ought to go into it. The intellectual trip comes when one person's conclusion (i.e. the creedal claim) becomes another person's starting point.

Rather we need to think things through afresh and see if we end up expressing that train of thought as "fully divine and fully human" or if we can come up with something that is easier to get our heads around.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
He was 'both fully divine and fully human'. This seems illogical unless you make the case uniquely exceptional and inexplicable
It's uniquely exceptional and inexplicable. That's kind of the point. Indeed the words used are a human attempt to grasp something that transcends humanity; hence the problem.

It's only a problem if you think you have to fully understand something to make it true, though.

quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Complex ideas by their nature often sound more believable than simple ones.
This is true, but is no standard by which to judge their truth. Or, as I posted not so long ago on another thread, are you advocating a return to describing everything in terms of fire, air, earth and water? Or Yorick, to performing diagnoses on the basis of "humours"?

[ 28. February 2014, 09:21: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
This is true, but is no standard by which to judge their truth. Or, as I posted not so long ago on another thread, are you advocating a return to describing everything in terms of fire, air, earth and water? Or Yorick, to performing diagnoses on the basis of "humours"?
Agreed. I believe in the incarnation, but as I've said a lot recently, not because it is logical. I think it requires a leap of faith.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Scott Atran, the anthropologist, argues that most religions have counter-intuitive ideas in them, because humans are attracted to that, but they must not be too counter-intuitive.

Thus a bird god is fine, as it is reasonably counter-intuitive, but a Venusian bird god which was created just before the Big Bang, and eats people for breakfast, might be too much.

So the incarnation is probably counter-intuitive enough to satisfy people?

Another interesting point by Atran is that religion should be reasonably costly, but not too costly. In other words, it should hurt you to an extent, but not to a ridiculous degree.
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
quote:
Yorick: I read on the Hot Jesus thread that He was 'both fully divine and fully human'. This seems illogical
What's illogical about that? Can't people be two things at the same time?
 
Posted by Yorick (# 12169) on :
 
So, Eutychus, would it be fair to say that you 'live with' the paradox by dismissing it? I would guess that most Christians have a reasonably functioning reconciliation of this paradox in their hearts, since this sort of dirt tends to make its way out again from under the carpet. If so, how do you do it? What mental framework scaffolds the illogic on a day-to-day basis?
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
What's illogical about that? Can't people be two things at the same time?
Well, let's list a few characteristics we know about the deity: knowing all things, being all places at the same time, being outside of time...

Now explain how someone can be man (rather than superman) and retain those characteristics.

It is obviously something that requires interpretation because at first glance they're mutually contradictory.

[ 28. February 2014, 09:28: Message edited by: pydseybare ]
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
So, Eutychus, would it be fair to say that you 'live with' the paradox by dismissing it? I would guess that most Christians have a reasonably functioning reconciliation of this paradox in their hearts, since this sort of dirt tends to make its way out again from under the carpet. If so, how do you do it? What mental framework scaffolds the illogic on a day-to-day basis?
Well from my point of view, I rationalise to some extent by saying that Jesus Christ has something of the essence of the deity, so to some extent retained the 'character' of the deity whilst at the same time giving up the obvious usual characteristics of the creator God.

On a day-to-day basis, I think it mostly means that I understand what the Creator God is like by looking at Jesus Christ. The latter is easier to understand than the former.
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
quote:
pydseybare: Well, let's list a few characteristics we know about the deity: knowing all things, being all places at the same time, being outside of time...

Now explain how someone can be man (rather than superman) and retain those characteristics.
Simple. God knows all, is everywhere and is outside of time. He creates a part of Himself that has all these abilities, but voluntarily puts them on hold for a while. However, all the experiences this part of Him has are shared within the all-knowing, everywhere-being, outside-of-time God.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
So, Eutychus, would it be fair to say that you 'live with' the paradox by dismissing it?
What do you mean by "dismiss"?
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
Simple. God knows all, is everywhere and is outside of time. He creates a part of Himself that has all these abilities, but voluntarily puts them on hold for a while. However, all the experiences this part of Him has are shared within the all-knowing, everywhere-being, outside-of-time God.
OK, so explain how this 'part of himself' is fully human. In the sense that the rest of us are.

How is one fully human if one had access to godly powers that everyone else does not have? Is that not a avatar rather than a fully human person?
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
How is one fully human if one had access to godly powers that everyone else does not have? Is that not a avatar rather than a fully human person?
That is a subdivision of this debate and relates to the doctrine (or discussion) of kenosis.

[ 28. February 2014, 09:55: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
True, I'm just trying to illustrate that the 'fully God, fully human' thing is not 'simple'. It just isn't.
 
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Well, let's list a few characteristics we know about the deity: knowing all things, being all places at the same time, being outside of time...

Now explain how someone can be man (rather than superman) and retain those characteristics.
I could make the same point about, say, Barack Obama being both black and white. These terms refer to both ethnic heritage and physical appearance. Even though the US Census would consider Obama white (they define it as "having European ancestry) AND black, he is almost universally viewed as being black because of the way he looks. "White" has an inherently flawed definition, because it is tying physical appearance (light skin) to ethnic background, in a world where lots of people with European heritage don't have light skin thanks to racial mixing.

So one could say, it's actually impossible to be black AND white, even though you can say you are to the government - but that's just an issue of the language used to describe race, rather than it being an issue of what people actually are.

I don't know that Jesus being fully human, fully divine is any different. It's probably the wrong way to correctly describe His nature, but it's the best that we can manage. The limitations of our language on this, shouldn't be the arbiter of whether the thing it is attempting to describe is true or not.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
Exactly my point: we have a limitation of human language and understanding.

If I thought it was not true, I wouldn't believe it - but the fact that I believe it does not make the idea 'simple'.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
So, Eutychus, would it be fair to say that you 'live with' the paradox by dismissing it?
What do you mean by "dismiss"?
Yorick, to put it another way: do you 'live with' the paradox that electricity can be described both as a waveform and as a stream of particles by dismissing it?

Or do you simply not believe in electricity because it has some paradoxical aspects?

[ 28. February 2014, 10:02: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
quote:
pydseybare: Is that not a avatar rather than a fully human person?
It depends what you mean by 'avatar'. I'm sure that it us nothing like us moving a puppet around on a computer screen like we did in Church of Fools, or even like what happened in the film Avatar. An almighty God could easily create a part of Him that is fully human without the restrictions these imperfect connections have.
 
Posted by MrsBeaky (# 17663) on :
 
I am reasonably intelligent (if you measure such things by having a good degree from an excellent university).
I'm also someone who likes things to make as much sense as possible but....
The Incarnation just won't submit itself to my preferences and occasionally that makes me really frustrated, so I think I understand part of what you are getting at, Yorick.

With fifty plus years of the Christian faith already lived (blimey I'm old!), I have to say that the Incarnation has been central to my continuing to walk that path, meditating on it, wrestling with it, feeling I have experienced it then feeling it slip away, only to return again, especially in the Eucharist. The God/ Man of Galilee draws me back again and again.

I know that sounds beyond the realms of logic and will probably frustrate and annoy some people, it does that to me too...butI have found the Incarnation to be a beautiful, powerful and transformative (is that a real word?!)mystery which cannot be grasped with just the mind.
 
Posted by Lord Jestocost (# 12909) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
How does that work for you? I wonder if Christians are happier to live with such paradoxes than atheists.
To me it's the blind-men-feeling-an-elephant scenario. Is it long and stringy or big and flappy? Neither. The two seemingly irreconcilable positions are close-ups of a much bigger picture into which they both fit. I may spend a lifetime trying to get the whole picture and I never will, but bit by bit along the way I may hopefully come to understand God a bit more.
 
Posted by Yorick (# 12169) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Yorick, to put it another way: do you 'live with' the paradox that electricity can be described both as a waveform and as a stream of particles by dismissing it?

Or do you simply not believe in electricity because it has some paradoxical aspects?
Good analogy. Practically, I suppose I live with that paradox of electricity on this sort of basis- it's invisible, it makes my toaster work, and it hurts if you lick it. On a day to day basis, therefore, I tend to dismiss any scientific theoretical paradox because it doesn't really matter to me (and I would trust scientists to seek to resolve for truth any logical impossibility with the rigour of their method). Is that how it works with the Incarnation and theology? I rather thought it should matter to you.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Yorick

Another point is that humans are basically irrational beings, and their rationality is therefore highly prized. But their irrationality is very important, (reason is the slave of the passions, and so on), and has to be fed up by various means, such as art, music, literature, and so on. And I think religion also, which has a kind of rational aspect to it, but also enshrines the irrational, or trans-rational, as people say today!
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
I tend to dismiss any scientific theoretical paradox because it doesn't really matter to me (and I would trust scientists to seek to resolve for truth any logical impossibility with the rigour of their method). Is that how it works with the Incarnation and theology? I rather thought it should matter to you.
I still dispute your use of the word "dismiss" and and am not sure about "it doesn't matter to me".

Where the analogy to electricity is similar is that how the incarnation works is not important to me on a daily basis*. Where it differs is that I don't expect theologians to end up managing to tie down the incarnation in the way you seem to expect scientists to resolve the paradoxical nature of electricity.

Besides, the incarnation matters in terms of its theological import, which stands irrespective of whether it can be adequately explained in human terms.

*The doctrine of kenosis, i.e. the extent to which "Christ emptied himself" does have more significant knock-on effects in terms of believers' expectations of what they could and should be doing: see attempts to walk on water and through walls ŕ la Bethel. But as I've said before, that's a subtopic.

[ 28. February 2014, 11:37: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
(reason is the slave of the passions, and so on),
He is misquoting Plato's tripartate theory of the soul there, in case anyone wants a reference.

[ 28. February 2014, 12:28: Message edited by: pydseybare ]
 
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
I agree with Mrs Beaky.

A fundamental point about God is that he isn't just bigger than we are. He's much bigger. Therefore, we cannot fully comprehend (in its classic meaning of grasp, get one's hands round) either him or all that he is. So any version of the statement, 'I don't understand the incarnation, or how Christ can be both fully human and fully divine. Therefore it must be wrong' quite simply does not work.

If one of our pre-suppositions is that God must be fully amenable to our own understanding, that is the wrong way round. It is better to approach him with awe and wonder, than to insist that he must fit what we expect of him.
 
Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
True, I'm just trying to illustrate that the 'fully God, fully human' thing is not 'simple'. It just isn't.
The other possibility is that it's so radically simple that we think it can't possibly be that simple, and we try to complicate it.

Jesus, uniquely in the whole history of creation, had two "natures": the divine nature and the human nature. It's partly that uniqueness that makes it impossible to comprehend - there's no other case of a dual nature that we can appeal to for comparison. A horse, for instance, can never be both fully horse and fully cat.

If we're going to use the word "paradox", we have to use it in a specific way, not meaning something that's illogical and therefore can't be true, but as something beyond logic, and therefore can't be comprehended. It's beyond logic in the sense that there is a limit to what you can say about it. You can state the "facts" as we believe them to be, and reason from those to other things we believe about Jesus (for instance, that his temptations and his death were as real as they are for any human being, and weren't in any way privileged or illusory); but you can't reason about how a dual nature might be possible in a general sense - it's something that, apart from the unique case of Jesus, is beyond human experience.

It's at times like this I'm tempted to take Wittgensteing's maxim about philosophy and apply it to theology: "that whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent". It's speculation that complicates the issue.
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
So, Eutychus, would it be fair to say that you 'live with' the paradox by dismissing it? I would guess that most Christians have a reasonably functioning reconciliation of this paradox in their hearts, since this sort of dirt tends to make its way out again from under the carpet. If so, how do you do it? What mental framework scaffolds the illogic on a day-to-day basis?
You seem to assume that it is only in the realm of theology that people have to live with paradox. In fact, paradox permeates life.

The fact that I can't understand the Incarnation doesn't bother me because there are so many other things I also can't get my mind around.

The other things I can't understand were created by God. I assume that God is more complicated than his creation. In that case, there is no reason why I should be able to understand the Incarnation.

Moo
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Does anyone understand* Incarnation? I read on the Hot Jesus thread that He was 'both fully divine and fully human'. This seems illogical unless you make the case uniquely exceptional and inexplicable, but I doubt that would have two millennia of carriage in the human imagination, so I must be missing something very obvious here. What's the deal?
It's a question of categories (in the logical sense).
White, red, blue, etc. are all colours - they're all members of the category colour. It's logically contradictory to say that something is wholly white and also wholly red.
Being made of paper, made of metal, etc. are also part of the same category - it's logically contradictory to say that something is wholly made of paper and also wholly made of metal.
But something can be wholly made of metal and wholly red, because red and made of metal are in different logical categories.
In the same way, being read all over is a different logical category from being black and white; so something can be black and white and read all over.

So, Socrates can be a human being and Socrates can be wise, because 'wise' and 'human being' are in different categories. It's logically contradictory to say that Socrates is a human being and a rabbit; because 'human being' and 'rabbit' are in the same logical category.

Now - 'divine' is not in the same category as anything else. God is not coloured, or made of anything, or a member of any biological species. Therefore, there is no logical contradiction in saying that something is human and divine. (Nor would it be contradictory to say that something was a lump of wood and divine.) Quite how that works is open to debate - e.g. are there things that Jesus knew as God but didn't know as a human being - but it's not contradictory.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
but it's not contradictory.
I can see you saying this, but I can't see your reasoning. How can the God who created everything, is eternal, everywhere-at-once etc etc logically also be a fallible, killable, in-one-place, non-superman human being.

Other than you asserting it is logical (or not illogical), I can't see that you have proven it is. Or isn't.

[ 28. February 2014, 13:31: Message edited by: pydseybare ]
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
I believe in the incarnation, but as I've said a lot recently, not because it is logical. I think it requires a leap of faith.
People tend to use the word 'logical' loosely, without thinking through the implications.
In one sense, believing that the planets orbit the sun in ellipses goes beyond logic; you can't deduce it from any purely logical axioms. You have to look through telescopes or observe falling objects.
It's one thing to say that something can't be deduced from basic logic or observation and therefore requires a leap of faith; and another thing to say that it's logically impossible and requires a leap of faith. The former I think is defensible. I don't think the latter can actually be done - things that are logically contradictory are actually meaningless. (What does it mean to talk about a square circle?)
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
Yes, but there are certain characteristic traits of being a creator deity which are incontroversially contradictory to being a human being. Hence you either have to change the common understanding of 'creator God' or of 'human being' if you are going to claim it is logical.
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
(reason is the slave of the passions, and so on),
He is misquoting Plato's tripartate theory of the soul there, in case anyone wants a reference.
Um, I rather doubt that. He's much more likely to be accurately paraphrasing Hume:
quote:
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
Ha, ok, well then Hume is (apparently) commenting on Plato.

It was a silly point, someone said previously that I wasn't providing enough web links.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
but it's not contradictory.
I can see you saying this, but I can't see your reasoning. How can the God who created everything, is eternal, everywhere-at-once etc etc logically also be a fallible, killable, in-one-place, non-superman human being.

Other than you asserting it is logical (or not illogical), I can't see that you have proven it is. Or isn't.
If it can't be proven to be a logical contradiction, then it's not illogical.
Let's divide statements into three types:
a) can be proven through logic or other pure reasoning: e.g. a triangle on the Euclidean plane with sides 3 units, 4 units, and 5 units, is right-angled.
b) can be disproven through logic: e.g. there exists a right angled triangle with sides 3 units, 4 units, and 6 units on the Euclidean plane. These are illogical.
c) can be neither proven nor disproven through logic and mathematics alone; e.g. Barack Obama is President of the United States; sheep are carnivorous; it is never moral to tell lies; etc.
Most statements are of type 'c' - the contention is that a statement is presumed to be of type 'c', until it is shown to be either a or b.

Now by 'logical' do you mean 'a' or do you mean 'a' and 'c'? It's certainly not necessarily irrational to believe statements of type 'c', even though they cannot be proven through logic.

As to how Jesus can both be omniscient and also have limited knowledge, God's knowledge isn't like human knowledge. (We don't know positively what God's knowledge is like, but we know it can't work in the same way that ours' does.) How that works out in terms of Jesus' subjective human psychology we don't know either. And so on in the case of other attributes.

It's not the case that we start out by dreaming up statements like 'Jesus is fully human and divine' as an exercise in metaphysics. Rather we start out with the evidence of the Gospel stories, and come to the conclusion that Jesus was human, but also that Jesus was God. So if we have reason to believe that from the Gospel story, then we have reason to believe that it isn't logically contradictory.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Part of our problem is that we don't know what the hell we're talking about when we speak of human nature, let alone God's divine nature. What does it mean to be fully human? It appears to be mean (for example), to possess a physical body (whether currently resident in that body or not), to be bound by unidirectional time as we normally understand it, to have a beginning, to be (at least potentially) rational, to have limitations to our knowledge and power, and so forth.

But that's all very vague--not at all a definitive statement of what human nature actually consists in. The borders are fuzzy to a lot of folk. Therefore the ongoing debates on
* when a fetus becomes "human" in nature(conception is the only logical point I can come up with, as there seems no alternate nature it could possess till then);
* what degree of deformity either mental or physical can strip someone of human nature (I would argue none);
* whether one ceases to be human at death (and therefore may be treated as an object rather than a human person);
* whether humanity and personhood are identical or simply overlapping categories;
* whether there are any cases in which a fetus/disabled person/person in a vegetative state/person with extensive cyborg parts (sci fi I know, but still) ceases to be "human" in nature and may therefore be treated as property (e.g. slavery, buying and selling vs. adoption, etc.)

There are also tendencies to mix up corruptions of the nature with the nature itself. For example, even on these boards we see all the time a confusion of "human nature" with sinfulness--people who seem to think that it is the very nature of humanity to be corrupt, and always has been, and always will be--and then argue that since God is not, cannot, be corrupt, therefore he cannot become human. But this is not true either, since sin is something that has happened to human nature, not the nature itself.

Which is all a very longwinded way of saying, if we can't even agree on what the constituents and borders of human nature are, how can we dare to say it is incompatible with divine nature? which we know even less about.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
Dafyd - I believe you might have proven it is internally consistent and believable, but not that it is logical.

You can't go from belief in the Jewish Yahweh logically to a belief in Jesus Christ as God. The first appears to suggest that the latter is not possible.

Of course, it looks logical backwards using Christian theology because, well, that is the point of Christianity!
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Ha, ok, well then Hume is (apparently) commenting on Plato.
I see no evidence for that inference either, I'm afraid.

And I don't think anyone's going to criticise you for not trying to furnish others' posts with citations and footnotes, especially if you miss the mark when you do.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:


And I don't think anyone's going to criticise you for not trying to furnish others' posts with citations and footnotes, especially if you miss the mark when you do.
Fair enough.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
(reason is the slave of the passions, and so on),
He is misquoting Plato's tripartate theory of the soul there, in case anyone wants a reference.
By gum, am I? Silly me, I thought I was quoting Hume, ah well.

Incidentally, Hume actually says that “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."

I suppose the astonishing word there is 'ought'.

Echoed to a degree by Schopenhauer, who said (paraphrase coming up), that we can use reason to get what we want, but not to decide what we want.

I suppose this used to be termed a sentimentalist moral ethics? Although I think there has been a revival of interest in this recently.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
Well, In The Republic Plato says that there are three parts to the soul and that in the balanced person, the logical part should be in control of the appetite and spirited part.

Which is why I thought it was a misquote. I must read Hume, it looks interesting.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Well, In The Republic Plato says that there are three parts to the soul and that in the balanced person, the logical part should be in control of the appetite and spirited part.

Which is why I thought it was a misquote. I must read Hume, it looks interesting.
Yes, in some ways, Hume is saying the reverse, which has caused plenty of discussion and controversy, as Hume of course, is often reckoned to be one of the fathers of skepticism, but this in fact, leads to a kind of anti-rationalism.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
I believe in the incarnation, but as I've said a lot recently, not because it is logical. I think it requires a leap of faith.
People tend to use the word 'logical' loosely, without thinking through the implications.
In one sense, believing that the planets orbit the sun in ellipses goes beyond logic; you can't deduce it from any purely logical axioms. You have to look through telescopes or observe falling objects.
It's one thing to say that something can't be deduced from basic logic or observation and therefore requires a leap of faith; and another thing to say that it's logically impossible and requires a leap of faith. The former I think is defensible. I don't think the latter can actually be done - things that are logically contradictory are actually meaningless. (What does it mean to talk about a square circle?)
Depends on how you define 'circle' and 'square', and whether you adhere to Euclidean geometry, I suppose. In taxicab geometry, circles are squares.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry#Circles_in_Taxicab_geometry
 
Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :
 
"Not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh: but by the taking of Manhood into God" (Athanasian Creed)
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Dafyd - I believe you might have proven it is internally consistent and believable, but not that it is logical.

You can't go from belief in the Jewish Yahweh logically to a belief in Jesus Christ as God. The first appears to suggest that the latter is not possible.
If something can be internally consistent and yet not logical, then I do not know what you mean by logical.
Going back to my previous post, do you believe that category c) is or isn't 'logical'?

One cannot go from the beliefs that all cats are mammals and all lions are mammals logically to a belief that all lions are cats. That doesn't mean that the conclusion isn't true.

If something is logically consistent backwards, then it is logically consistent forwards. Logic is adirectional.

[ 28. February 2014, 16:24: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
If something can be internally consistent and yet not logical, then I do not know what you mean by logical.
Going back to my previous post, do you believe that category c) is or isn't 'logical'?
Well, I think logic means that one thing in an argument leads on from another so that the result can be reasonably inferred from the previous steps.

Barak Obama stood in a presidential election (we have proof), people voted on a given day (we have proof), people counted the votes, it is within the presidential period since the vote - therefore it is a logical step to say that he is currently US President.

Furthermore, he has an office in the White House, he lives there with his family, the US Secret Service protects him - therefore he is US President.

Of course, these could be mistaken as well - the guy could be a fake, the media could be lying and so on. Something logical is not necessarily correct, of course.

Similarly you can use logic to tell whether a sheep is a carnivore: it lives in fields, it eats grass, it will not consume meat - therefore it isn't a carnivore.

So no, I don't accept that c) is not an example of a logical argument.

Religious faith is of a completely different order to this kind of argument.

One cannot infer that Jesus Christ is Lord. One can believe it, but not by logic.

quote:
One cannot go from the beliefs that all cats are mammals and all lions are mammals logically to a belief that all lions are cats. That doesn't mean that the conclusion isn't true.
True, but I don't think that is anything to do with it.

Mammals have certain characteristics. Lions have these characteristics. Therefore logically, lions are mammals.

quote:
If something is logically consistent backwards, then it is logically consistent forwards. Logic is adirectional.
I agree. Saying that Jesus Christ is God is not logical. It is obviously internally consistent in terms of Christian theology.

[ 28. February 2014, 16:37: Message edited by: pydseybare ]
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
It's a guess.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Does anyone understand* Incarnation? I read on the Hot Jesus thread that He was 'both fully divine and fully human'. This seems illogical unless you make the case uniquely exceptional and inexplicable, but I doubt that would have two millennia of carriage in the human imagination, so I must be missing something very obvious here. What's the deal?
* as a curious adult of moderate intelligence but theological illiteracy.
While I wouldn't claim to "fully" understand it, it is hardly as "paradoxical" as many on this thread seem to think it is. The unity of God and man is in the Person, it is not a mixture of the natures. The latter indeed would be basically incomprehensible and probably illogical. And I have illustrated that for you with an analogy before, an analogy which you found "illuminating" concerning the Incarnation. So is this here a case of memory loss, or have new questions arisen for you?

quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Yes, but there are certain characteristic traits of being a creator deity which are incontroversially contradictory to being a human being. Hence you either have to change the common understanding of 'creator God' or of 'human being' if you are going to claim it is logical.
You would have some kind of point if Christianity would claim that somehow human nature and the Godhead coexisted in Jesus. That is not the Christian claim though. The Incarnation is a unity in Person, not an amalgam of natures. The reason we can point at the human being Jesus Christ, who as He stood there was human through and through with nothing else added or taken away, and call Him God is not that somehow the Creator was compressed into that body. The reason is that this is Who He was, not what He was. And that same Who also has another way of being, namely as the Godhead. If you want an analogy, think of Dracula, who can appear as a specific kind of humanoid (called a "vampire") and at other times can appear as a bat. The vampire humanoid and the bat certainly have very different natures, but still it makes sense to call both of them "Dracula". It is the same person. Now imagine a Super-Dracula that can somehow manage to be both at once. Not in the same place, I mean literally one person who somehow controls the humanoid vampire and bat body simultaneously. That would still be one person, you could point at both or either one of them and say "That is Super-Dracula over there." But if someone asks you what sort of being Super-Dracula is, then you would have to answer "Super-Dracula is both a vampire humanoid and a bat." And if you then get asked back whether you mean some kind of human with bat wings, you would say "No, there is no mixture there. Super-Dracula is both totally a humanoid vampire and totally a bat. Just look. On the left we have a humanoid vampire, on the right a bat, but both are Super-Dracula. Together. It's the same dude."

Admittedly, all this is very strange. But I don't think that it is illogical. And in some sense it is almost easier to think of the real Incarnation than of Super-Dracula. For with Super-Dracula we would worry how the humanoid vampire brain gets coordinated with the bat brain, in a practical sense. How do we wire these together? But with an incorporeal omnipotent Spirit as the second nature, wiring is not much of an issue...
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
You would have some kind of point if Christianity would claim that somehow human nature and the Godhead coexisted in Jesus. That is not the Christian claim though. The Incarnation is a unity in Person, not an amalgam of natures. The reason we can point at the human being Jesus Christ, who as He stood there was human through and through with nothing else added or taken away, and call Him God is not that somehow the Creator was compressed into that body. The reason is that this is Who He was, not what He was.
Maybe. I'm not sure how you can be so definite about some of this.

quote:
And that same Who also has another way of being, namely as the Godhead. If you want an analogy, think of Dracula, who can appear as a specific kind of humanoid (called a "vampire") and at other times can appear as a bat. The vampire humanoid and the bat certainly have very different natures, but still it makes sense to call both of them "Dracula". It is the same person. Now imagine a Super-Dracula that can somehow manage to be both at once. Not in the same place, I mean literally one person who somehow controls the humanoid vampire and bat body simultaneously. That would still be one person, you could point at both or either one of them and say "That is Super-Dracula over there." But if someone asks you what sort of being Super-Dracula is, then you would have to answer "Super-Dracula is both a vampire humanoid and a bat." And if you then get asked back whether you mean some kind of human with bat wings, you would say "No, there is no mixture there. Super-Dracula is both totally a humanoid vampire and totally a bat. Just look. On the left we have a humanoid vampire, on the right a bat, but both are Super-Dracula. Together. It's the same dude."
OK now try to explain it without all the sci-fi shite. I'm not aware of anyone claiming to have two natures in real life, hence other than making up some kind of Superman, we're into illogical territory.

quote:
Admittedly, all this is very strange. But I don't think that it is illogical. And in some sense it is almost easier to think of the real Incarnation than of Super-Dracula. For with Super-Dracula we would worry how the humanoid vampire brain gets coordinated with the bat brain, in a practical sense. How do we wire these together? But with an incorporeal omnipotent Spirit as the second nature, wiring is not much of an issue...
It is not about wiring, it is about the nature of things.

Of course you can explain it, because ever since Nietzsche and Mary Shelly and the early sci-fi writers, we've had people trying to make sense of the paradox.

But because we have a culture where the impossible is commonplace in popular fiction and discourse, that doesn't therefore make it logical. Particularly when a big reason for the origin of those stories in the public discourse is Christology.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
If something can be internally consistent and yet not logical, then I do not know what you mean by logical.
Well, I think logic means that one thing in an argument leads on from another so that the result can be reasonably inferred from the previous steps.
Belief in the Incarnation isn't an argument. It's a belief. Therefore, it's irrelevant whether the steps lead on from each other, because there are no steps. If you're talking about reasons for believing in the incarnation, that's a different matter. Reasons for believing Jesus is a human being are obvious. Reasons for believing he was God are more complicated. But there are reasons.

I, however, think there's a difference between saying it's reasonable to infer something from particular premises, and saying that it's logically required to infer something from those premises. Something is only logically required if it involves a contradiction to infer the opposite. 'Logical' is far stronger than 'reasonable'. It can only cause confusion to use one to mean the other.

quote:
Barak Obama stood in a presidential election (we have proof), people voted on a given day (we have proof), people counted the votes, it is within the presidential period since the vote - therefore it is a logical step to say that he is currently US President.

Of course, these could be mistaken as well - the guy could be a fake, the media could be lying and so on. Something logical is not necessarily correct, of course.
No. The conclusion of a logical argument based on true premises is necessarily correct. That's the point of logic.

quote:
So no, I don't accept that c) is not an example of a logical argument.
Firstly, 'Barack Obama is President' is a statement, not an argument. It's important not to confuse the two.
Secondly, you've conceded that your belief that 'Barack Obama is President' is not necessarily correct. Therefore, it is not based on a logical argument, since in a logical argument the premises make the conclusion necessarily correct.
So I'd say your assertion is a) illogical, and b) wrong.

quote:
Religious faith is of a completely different order to this kind of argument.

One cannot infer that Jesus Christ is Lord. One can believe it, but not by logic.
One could. For example, one could believe that the oldest son of Mary is Lord, and that Jesus Christ is the oldest son of Mary; from which the conclusion that Jesus Christ is Lord follows.

The idea that Jesus Christ is God wasn't just revealed to the first disciples. It took Christians a good three hundred plus years to argue about it. The belief may or may not be based on good arguments; but it's not a belief that's based on nothing.

quote:
quote:
One cannot go from the beliefs that all cats are mammals and all lions are mammals logically to a belief that all lions are cats. That doesn't mean that the conclusion isn't true.
True, but I don't think that is anything to do with it.

Mammals have certain characteristics. Lions have these characteristics. Therefore logically, lions are mammals.
Actually, that argument would be logically fallacious. It would be a logically sound argument if your first premise were 'All animals with certain characteristics are mammals'.

quote:
quote:
If something is logically consistent backwards, then it is logically consistent forwards. Logic is adirectional.
I agree. Saying that Jesus Christ is God is not logical. It is obviously internally consistent in terms of Christian theology.
To summarise: I think you're using 'logical' in the Mr Spock sense. Unfortunately, the writers of Star Trek were uninterested in formal argument, and often didn't give much thought to what they meant at all beyond some vague opposition between logic and everything else. The Mr Spock use of 'logical' is not actually much use in any serious context.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
No. The conclusion of a logical argument based on true premises is necessarily correct. That's the point of logic.
Let's just say for the sake of argument that you are correct.

What possible true premises could there be that necessitates the logical conclusion that Jesus Christ is/was both fully man and fully God.

Use your definitions to show that the incarnation is logical.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
I don't accept that you are correct, by the way. Or at least only in a very narrow sense.

from wiki

quote:
In logic and philosophy, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, by giving reasons for accepting a particular conclusion as evident. The general structure of an argument in a natural language is that of premises (typically in the form of propositions, statements or sentences) in support of a claim: the conclusion. The structure of some arguments can also be set out in a formal language, and formally-defined "arguments" can be made independently of natural language arguments, as in math, logic and computer science.
I'm using a form of informal logic. Plato used forms of informal logic in his dialogues - where dialogues offered reasons to accept particular conclusions. I don't accept many of the conclusions in Platonic dialogues, but that doesn't mean that they are somehow not logical.

I accept that this is not the only way to understand or use the word logic.
 
Posted by shadeson (# 17132) on :
 
Just to add my quick thought on the OP.

Jesus said "I always do the will of the Father".

To my understanding, this is the nub of the difference between the rest of humanity and the incarnate God.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Maybe. I'm not sure how you can be so definite about some of this.
One can be pretty definite about what the Church has traditionally taught about this, e.g., by looking at the ancient Athanasian Creed:
quote:
Furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man. God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of substance of His mother, born in the world. Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood. Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ.
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
OK now try to explain it without all the sci-fi shite. I'm not aware of anyone claiming to have two natures in real life, hence other than making up some kind of Superman, we're into illogical territory.
Well, indeed, Jesus Christ is some kind of Superman, namely He is the one and only God-man. And you seem to consider "illogical" as a synonym for "extraordinary" or "preternatural". That is not the case. Finally, anybody calling my time-intensive efforts "shite" does not deserve more effort from my side.

quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
But because we have a culture where the impossible is commonplace in popular fiction and discourse, that doesn't therefore make it logical. Particularly when a big reason for the origin of those stories in the public discourse is Christology.
Well, what precisely is your argument that two natures cannot possibly be united in one person? Waving your arms about and screaming "illogical" at the top of your lungs does not count.
 
Posted by MrsBeaky (# 17663) on :
 
Wow, IngoB, just wow!

Thank you

The Dracula analogy is brilliant except for the fact that he did nasty things! Is there a better creature we could use in an equally powerful way, I wonder?
 
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
IngoB

I also think that was helpful.

I have a somewhat different question, which seems to be relevant to the intention of the thread. Knowing that there is, generally, more to be found in Catholic theology and the writings of the Church Fathers, do you know how the church views the development of wisdom in Jesus? (Luke 2:52).

In another discussion in Kerygmania, a question arose which I characterised this way. During his earthly ministry, did Jesus experience "epiphanies"? In the gospels, we find him expressing wonderment (amazement) over the faith of the centurion and the lack of faith of people from his own community. It looks as though he learned, or became clarified in his understanding, as a result of these experiences.

And in Gethsemane, we see him genuinely wrestling, in agony, over his impending fate. It is as if, however prepared he may have been in his mind, there was a deeper wrestling going on in his human will. I can relate to that.

It may be that our right response is simply to wonder how these things could be.

Underlying this is the deeper issue that the making of discoveries, the deepening of awareness, are significant aspects of being human. They do not seem to imply an earlier sinful condition; rather that specific experiences can indeed help us to "grow in wisdom". The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews observes (2:17) "therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect".

Is this issue covered in anything you have read? I find it a puzzle.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Maybe. I'm not sure how you can be so definite about some of this.
One can be pretty definite about what the Church has traditionally taught about this, e.g., by looking at the ancient Athanasian Creed
Well, ok, I've never argued that Christians did not believe it. Even so, I still have difficulty with you being sure about some of the things you said here.

quote:
Well, indeed, Jesus Christ is some kind of Superman, namely He is the one and only God-man. And you seem to consider "illogical" as a synonym for "extraordinary" or "preternatural". That is not the case. Finally, anybody calling my time-intensive efforts "shite" does not deserve more effort from my side.
First, if it was a 'superman' he would not be a human like us. Indeed, part of the whole paradox is how the deity could end up being a man like us, rather than some super-human (and therefore non-human) being.

Finally, the amount of time you spend on your posts has no bearing on whether they make any sense. As it happens, I was referring to the quality of the genre rather than your use of the example.

quote:
Well, what precisely is your argument that two natures cannot possibly be united in one person? Waving your arms about and screaming "illogical" at the top of your lungs does not count.
A logical argument requires steps which lead on from each other. Bringing something into an argument which doesn't actually exist, and in fact has been expressly created in order to understand the very paradox we're discussing, is a pretty good indication that you don't have a logical argument.

Secondly, given that I believe in the incarnation, clearly I believe it is possible. But at the same time I'm saying that there is no way you or anyone else can make a solid argument for believing it, because it is contradictory. The nature of belief in this, and other aspects of Christianity is emphatically not due to logic.

[code]

[ 01. March 2014, 07:12: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
Another way to think of it is this: what kind of prerequisites would we need to accept the Incarnation and that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully Man? Answer: acceptance of Christian theology (tradition, the bible, or whatever and however one understands that)

Within that framework, it makes enough sense to be believed. But we can't get to that framework with logical argument.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
I don't think you can get to any view of reality via logical argument, can you? They are all guesses, it seems to me, although fans of scientific realism tell me that it's the best educated guess there is! Dunno really.
 
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
Actually, I may have answered, at least in part, my own question.

From the Catholic Catechism.

quote:
Christ's soul and his human knowledge

471 Apollinarius of Laodicaea asserted that in Christ the divine Word had replaced the soul or spirit. Against this error the Church confessed that the eternal Son also assumed a rational, human soul.

472 This human soul that the Son of God assumed is endowed with a true human knowledge. As such, this knowledge could not in itself be unlimited: it was exercised in the historical conditions of his existence in space and time. This is why the Son of God could, when he became man, "increase in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man", and would even have to inquire for himself about what one in the human condition can learn only from experience. This corresponded to the reality of his voluntary emptying of himself, taking "the form of a slave".

473 But at the same time, this truly human knowledge of God's Son expressed the divine life of his person. "The human nature of God's Son, not by itself but by its union with the Word, knew and showed forth in itself everything that pertains to God." Such is first of all the case with the intimate and immediate knowledge that the Son of God made man has of his Father. The Son in his human knowledge also showed the divine penetration he had into the secret thoughts of human hearts.

474 By its union to the divine wisdom in the person of the Word incarnate, Christ enjoyed in his human knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal plans he had come to reveal. What he admitted to not knowing in this area, he elsewhere declared himself not sent to reveal.

Christ's human will

475 Similarly, at the sixth ecumenical council, Constantinople III in 681, the Church confessed that Christ possesses two wills and two natural operations, divine and human. They are not opposed to each other, but cooperate in such a way that the Word made flesh willed humanly in obedience to his Father all that he had decided divinely with the Father and the Holy Spirit for our salvation. Christ's human will "does not resist or oppose but rather submits to his divine and almighty will."

 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't think you can get to any view of reality via logical argument, can you? They are all guesses, it seems to me, although fans of scientific realism tell me that it's the best educated guess there is! Dunno really.
Well, to the extent that we can never 'know' anything, I suppose you are right.

But in the general way of things, we can say that some things are arguments based in the form of

something leads us to something leads us to think something leads us to some conclusion.

Some other arguments are of the form:

you've heard it said something, but I tell you something else.

In the case of the incarnation, if you start from the position of believing in an almighty creator deity (or actually the reality of human individuality), you can't then get to a person who is both fully God and fully man.

Some things cannot be known by logic.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Some things cannot be known by logic.
That's where revelation comes in - specifically, for Christians, revelation through Scripture.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
That's where revelation comes in - specifically, for Christians, revelation through Scripture.
Right, exactly.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Wait... you're agreeing with me there?
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
I'm agreeing with the concept that religion is revelatory, not logical, knowledge. Why, what did you think I was agreeing with?
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
What surprised me (in the light of previous discussions) was your apparent agreement that Christianity involves some revelation for which Scripture is necessary, if not sufficient.

Is a belief in divine revelation through Scripture concering aspects of the incarnation in any way a part of your personal avowed belief in the incarnation?
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
What surprised me (in the light of previous discussions) was your apparent agreement that Christianity involves some revelation for which Scripture is necessary, if not sufficient.
Oh I see. Yes, you are right, I was being imprecise by agreeing without specifying what in your post I was agreeing with. Given that I don't accept there is something called 'scripture', clearly I am not agreeing with that sub-clause.

quote:
Is a belief in divine revelation through Scripture concering aspects of the incarnation in any way a part of your personal avowed belief in the incarnation?
Nope. I'm not so sure it is really a part of yours either, given that the real argument regarding the dual nature of Christ is extra-biblical. And yes, before anyone says, there are obviously indications in the text - but a straight reading does not inevitably lead to the idea of Christ being fully man and fully God.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
No. The conclusion of a logical argument based on true premises is necessarily correct. That's the point of logic.
Let's just say for the sake of argument that you are correct.

What possible true premises could there be that necessitates the logical conclusion that Jesus Christ is/was both fully man and fully God.

Use your definitions to show that the incarnation is logical.
You're the person getting hung up over whether the incarnation is or is not 'logical'.

Trivially,
from 'Jesus Christ was fully God' and 'Jesus Christ was fully human' we can deduce 'Jesus Christ was fully God and fully human'.
Likewise, from, 'Only God can redeem humanity from sin,' and 'Jesus Christ redeemed humanity from sin,' we can deduce, 'Jesus Christ was God'.
From 'Jesus suffered on the cross' and 'if Jesus was not human Jesus would not have suffered' we can deduce 'Jesus was human'.

Look, I think that because of your loose use of the word 'logical' you're trading on an ambiguity. When you say you can't go from Jewish YHWH to belief in the incarnation, you're arguing that there's no watertight or near watertight sequence of steps. But when you say that means it's not logical to believe in it, you're doing so as if the belief fails to clear the bar of basic consistency with reality. You're committing a fallacy of ambiguity. Which is illogical.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
I'm not so sure it is really a part of yours either, given that the real argument regarding the dual nature of Christ is extra-biblical.
In that respect the incarnation is like the trinity. In both cases, the term is not in Scripture but the concept is used to circumscribe what Scripture points to. I think there's a broad consensus that Scripture points to the incarnation; the arguments about the "dual nature of Christ" are (at the risk of repeating myself) a sub-argument within that circumscription.

If you don't recognise any distinctive revelation via Scripture and don't think the incarnation is something that can be arrived at through logical reasoning, I'm curious to know why you believe in it. You mention a "leap of faith", but even that "leap of faith" has to start with a proposition. Where did it come from?

[ 01. March 2014, 09:16: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
You're the person getting hung up over whether the incarnation is or is not 'logical'.
Excuse me. There has been a discussion about the philosophy of knowledge for thousands of years, at least as far back as when Plato contrasted the idea of knowledge from justified true belief and the knowledge that Socrates received from the Oracle of Delphi, who it was said was infallible.

Now, if you want to define logic in a mathematical sense rather than the common use of informal logic which derives directly from Plato, then that frankly is not my problem.

The fact remains that western argument is based on informal logic. Try going to a court of law and arguing that something is only logical when the conclusion is the only possible result from premises.

Furthermore, the oft quoted Leap of faith (or more precisely a leap 'to' faith) is a term from Kierkegaard, for this precise situation - namely the acceptance of a religious conclusion without empirical and logical reasons. It is not that someone has yet to find reasons which unambiguously mean that he is forced to accept that Jesus Christ is both man and God, but that those reasons cannot exist. It is clearly in a philosophical understanding deeply rooted in classical philosophy and in contrast to the supposed 'logical' religion of Kant and Hegel.

You don't have to accept that I'm right, but you can't continue to insinuate that this is a) not a real philosophical problem b) that philosophers have not thought about it and c) that I made it up last week. I didn't.

I have not got a 'hang-up'. I happen to be persuaded by the philosophical argument that it is true.

quote:
Trivially,
from 'Jesus Christ was fully God' and 'Jesus Christ was fully human' we can deduce 'Jesus Christ was fully God and fully human'.
Likewise, from, 'Only God can redeem humanity from sin,' and 'Jesus Christ redeemed humanity from sin,' we can deduce, 'Jesus Christ was God'.
From 'Jesus suffered on the cross' and 'if Jesus was not human Jesus would not have suffered' we can deduce 'Jesus was human'.
All of those only have relevance if you have Christian faith. One cannot deduce any of them by logic.

I think you've been watching too much Sherlock. The great error of Conan Doyle was to assume that it is possible to find so much evidence and be able to dismiss so much other evidence that one, startling, conclusion was the only one left. Life is not like that, and religion certainly is not.

quote:
Look, I think that because of your loose use of the word 'logical' you're trading on an ambiguity. When you say you can't go from Jewish YHWH to belief in the incarnation, you're arguing that there's no watertight or near watertight sequence of steps.
No, there is no loose use. It is a perfectly acceptable use, just one that is not as narrow as yours is, which is so tight as to be functionally useless.

I am saying that there are no logical steps between Yahweh and the incarnation, watertight or otherwise. One cannot be given the information about Yahweh and ever, independently, get to the incarnation. Total contradiction.

quote:
But when you say that means it's not logical to believe in it, you're doing so as if the belief fails to clear the bar of basic consistency with reality. You're committing a fallacy of ambiguity. Which is illogical.
Nope. I'm applying the idea that to have an logical argument you must have steps that follow on from each other - something which is impossible if you start from Yahweh and know nothing of Jesus Christ, but somehow invent him in a puff of logic.

We know about the incarnation because God has broken into our understanding. Not because we reasoned him by logic.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
In that respect the incarnation is like the trinity. In both cases, the term is not in Scripture but the concept is used to circumscribe what Scripture points to. I think there's a broad consensus that Scripture points to the incarnation; the arguments about the "dual nature of Christ" are (at the risk of repeating myself) a sub-argument within that circumscription.
Well, I accept that you have asserted that the dual nature is a sub-argument, but I've not accepted it. In fact I think the dual nature is an integral part of the idea of the incarnation.

quote:
If you don't recognise any distinctive revelation via Scripture and don't think the incarnation is something that can be arrived at through logical reasoning, I'm curious to know why you believe in it. You mention a "leap of faith", but even that "leap of faith" has to start with a proposition. Where did it come from?
Revelation via the Holy Spirit. C'mon, this is hardly a new idea! How do you think early Christians heard about it before the NT was in a written form?
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Well, I accept that you have asserted that the dual nature is a sub-argument, but I've not accepted it. In fact I think the dual nature is an integral part of the idea of the incarnation.
I'm sorry, I expressed that badly. Let me try again:

I think that there is a huge consensus in Christendom that the Scriptures point to the concept which has become known as the incarnation - broadly, that God became man - and that today, we derive the concept from Scripture. In other words, there is little argument about that. What there is huge argument about - as for the trinity - is how the details of that concept actually work. But this is not the same as argument about the concept itself. I hope that's clearer.

quote:
How do you think early Christians heard about it before the NT was in a written form?
I think they heard about it from the apostles and the other first disciples, not directly from God. Scripture got written as these direct witnesses started dying out, which is why I think it's an important vehicle of God's revelation to subsequent generations.

quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
We know about the incarnation because God has broken into our understanding.
Why "we"? Do you think God breaks into collective understanding somehow? And if so how? Or do you mean "I know..."?

[ 01. March 2014, 10:12: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick
Does anyone understand* Incarnation? I read on the Hot Jesus thread that He was 'both fully divine and fully human'. This seems illogical unless you make the case uniquely exceptional and inexplicable, but I doubt that would have two millennia of carriage in the human imagination, so I must be missing something very obvious here. What's the deal?

* as a curious adult of moderate intelligence but theological illiteracy.

Ta.
Firstly, let me say that I thoroughly sympathise with your concern about illogicality. It is a well established principle within logic that if we embrace contradiction (rather than merely apparent contradiction) then we can affirm anything we like, and therefore know nothing. This is the "principle of explosion" (or ex falso quodlibet).

Just as we cannot engage intellectually (or in any way, for that matter) with the concept of a "square circle", so we cannot engage with a "God-man" if 'God' and 'man' are mutually exclusive and contradictory elements. The truth is that they are not necessarily in any kind of epistemic opposition to each other.

The fact that man is made "in the image of God" is biblical evidence that there is some kind of ontological continuity between God and man, such that God revealing Himself in a man and as a man is a perfectly harmonious arrangement. We also have to define what we mean by 'God'. As a result of 'kenosis' (God emptying Himself to become man), it is clear that we cannot simply define 'God' in a way that is entirely dependent on His eternal 'structural' attributes, such as omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. God is a person and can be defined at the personal level of character - particularly moral character. This character can be manifested in a form from which the above-mentioned attributes have been discarded.

One could argue that 'God' by definition means "the Supreme Being" and therefore He cannot be 'structurally' compromised. In one sense that is certainly true. But we need to take into account that God is a God of love, and love requires reciprocity and therefore relationship or community. Thus the eternal God must exist in more than one person - hence the doctrine of the Trinity. Within this community there is no need for all members of the trinity to be "supreme", and, in fact, the community of persons as a whole can be "the Supreme Being" while internally involved in a process of kenosis involving one member of the community, for the sake of the achievement of a particular purpose defined by the character of the community, namely love.

Certainly the Christian faith does emphatically not involve leaps of faith into anti-intellectualism. That is an erroneous view of faith, and if I seriously thought that my Christian faith relied on the embrace of contradiction (i.e. absolute rather than merely apparent contradiction) then I would happily reject it.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
The fact that man is made "in the image of God" is biblical evidence that there is some kind of ontological continuity between God and man, such that God revealing Himself in a man and as a man is a perfectly harmonious arrangement.
Great point!
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Firstly, let me say that I thoroughly sympathise with your concern about illogicality. It is a well established principle within logic that if we embrace contradiction (rather than merely apparent contradiction) then we can affirm anything we like, and therefore know nothing. This is the "principle of explosion" (or ex falso quodlibet).
That is certainly a principle within classical formal logic. But then you'd have to prove that religion and faith was something which could be analysed by formal logic in this way.

quote:
Just as we cannot engage intellectually (or in any way, for that matter) with the concept of a "square circle", so we cannot engage with a "God-man" if 'God' and 'man' are mutually exclusive and contradictory elements. The truth is that they are not necessarily in any kind of epistemic opposition to each other.
That's just an assertion. There are ways to engage with a square-circle as has been shown already.

quote:
The fact that man is made "in the image of God" is biblical evidence that there is some kind of ontological continuity between God and man, such that God revealing Himself in a man and as a man is a perfectly harmonious arrangement.
And if one does not accept your interpretation of the bible?

quote:
We also have to define what we mean by 'God'. As a result of 'kenosis' (God emptying Himself to become man), it is clear that we cannot simply define 'God' in a way that is entirely dependent on His eternal 'structural' attributes, such as omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. God is a person and can be defined at the personal level of character - particularly moral character. This character can be manifested in a form from which the above-mentioned attributes have been discarded.
First, if you are redefining the terms, you're not using logic. You are changing the goalposts to fit your understanding.

quote:
One could argue that 'God' by definition means "the Supreme Being" and therefore He cannot be 'structurally' compromised. In one sense that is certainly true. But we need to take into account that God is a God of love, and love requires reciprocity and therefore relationship or community. Thus the eternal God must exist in more than one person - hence the doctrine of the Trinity. Within this community there is no need for all members of the trinity to be "supreme", and, in fact, the community of persons as a whole can be "the Supreme Being" while internally involved in a process of kenosis involving one member of the community, for the sake of the achievement of a particular purpose defined by the character of the community, namely love.
Assertion again. Nobody is forced to believe that God is Love from a position of believing in Yahweh. Nobody is forced into believing in Yahweh from a position of believing in a creator deity. These are not arguments based on anything except your own preconceptions.

quote:
Certainly the Christian faith does emphatically not involve leaps of faith into anti-intellectualism. That is an erroneous view of faith, and if I seriously thought that my Christian faith relied on the embrace of contradiction (i.e. absolute rather than merely apparent contradiction) then I would happily reject it.
I reject your 'certainly'. Happily on this you are not arguing with me, but some of the greatest Christian philosophers of all time.
 
Posted by k-mann (# 8490) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by MrsBeaky:
Wow, IngoB, just wow!

Thank you

The Dracula analogy is brilliant except for the fact that he did nasty things! Is there a better creature we could use in an equally powerful way, I wonder?
Well, Christ is the Anti-Dracula - he does not take our blood, he gives us his. [Biased]
 
Posted by k-mann (# 8490) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Secondly, given that I believe in the incarnation, clearly I believe it is possible. But at the same time I'm saying that there is no way you or anyone else can make a solid argument for believing it, because it is contradictory.
So you are actully saying that you don’t care about the Law of Non-contradiction? To quote (or rather paraphrase) J.P. Moreland (out of memory): “If the Bible teaches something that is a logical contradiction, you should disbelieve the Bible.”
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by k-mann:
So you are actully saying that you don’t care about the Law of Non-contradiction? To quote (or rather paraphrase) J.P. Moreland (out of memory): “If the Bible teaches something that is a logical contradiction, you should disbelieve the Bible.”
I'm saying religion in general, and the great paradoxes of Christianity in particular, cannot be interrogated by formal logic. In fact, I don't think they can be interrogated by any kind of logic, formal or informal.

I don't know if this is the same JP Moreland but if it is, he doesn't sound to me like someone I'll take lessons in logical argumentation from.

[ 01. March 2014, 13:25: Message edited by: pydseybare ]
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
The fact that man is made "in the image of God" is biblical evidence that there is some kind of ontological continuity between God and man, such that God revealing Himself in a man and as a man is a perfectly harmonious arrangement.
And if one does not accept your interpretation of the bible?
I don't know of a way of interpreting the Bible that denies that this statement about the image of God is about people being somehow created in the image of God.

Plenty of people, of course, would say that the statement has no validity.

But whether the statement has validity, or whether there is another way to understand the statement, I think that the idea of "incarnation" requires the acceptance of some kind of dualism.
 
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:

I don't know of a way of interpreting the Bible that denies that this statement about the image of God is about people being somehow created in the image of God.

Plenty of people, of course, would say that the statement has no validity.
Well, of course different people might well argue about what it meant too. But the idea that because man is created in God's image that therefore means that there is 'ontological continuity' with the concept of God revealing himself as a man is obviously something that some people who believe in Yahweh would take issue with. For example Jewish people, some of whom would dismiss the idea that Yahweh could ever be a man.

The idea of 'ontological continuity' itself is something which only makes sense from within Christian theology.

[ 01. March 2014, 14:05: Message edited by: pydseybare ]
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
I would still like to know how God has "broken into our understanding".
 
Posted by Gwalchmai (# 17802) on :
 
The consensus so far seems to be that formal logic is not going to prove that Jesus was fully God and fully man. Does that matter? Was anybody ever persuaded to become Christian solely by a reasoned argument?

If Jesus is not fully God as well as fully human, then he was no more than a prophet, which is the Islamic point of view. If Jesus was merely a human prophet, why do we worship him?
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
You're the person getting hung up over whether the incarnation is or is not 'logical'.
Now, if you want to define logic in a mathematical sense rather than the common use of informal logic which derives directly from Plato, then that frankly is not my problem.
The wikipedia article you link to does not mention Plato. It says informal logic derives from the late 1970s.
You said in response to IngoB's Dracula analogy:
quote:
A logical argument requires steps which lead on from each other. Bringing something into an argument which doesn't actually exist, and in fact has been expressly created in order to understand the very paradox we're discussing, is a pretty good indication that you don't have a logical argument.
Using analogies, rather than steps that lead on from each other, is something Plato does all the time. E.g. Plato's Cave. The tradition of western reasoning that derives from Plato does it all the time. If you're using a definition of logic by which the western tradition of argument is logical, then you can't reject IngoB's analogy as having not place in logical argument. If you use a definition of logic by which IngoB's analogy isn't part of logical argument, then you're using something more strict than the western tradition.

quote:
I think you've been watching too much Sherlock. The great error of Conan Doyle was to assume that it is possible to find so much evidence and be able to dismiss so much other evidence that one, startling, conclusion was the only one left. Life is not like that, and religion certainly is not.
I have no idea how you're getting this from my posts.
You can't say life is illogical just because life is not like that. So you can't say religion is illogical either. The difference between life and religion is at most a matter of degree.

quote:
quote:
Look, I think that because of your loose use of the word 'logical' you're trading on an ambiguity. When you say you can't go from Jewish YHWH to belief in the incarnation, you're arguing that there's no watertight or near watertight sequence of steps.
No, there is no loose use. It is a perfectly acceptable use, just one that is not as narrow as yours is, which is so tight as to be functionally useless.

I am saying that there are no logical steps between Yahweh and the incarnation, watertight or otherwise. One cannot be given the information about Yahweh and ever, independently, get to the incarnation. Total contradiction.
I'm sorry: are you saying that one cannot deduce the incarnation from the existence of Yahweh using pure reason; or are you saying that there's a total contradiction. These are completely different assertions.
There are no logical steps between Euclid's first four axioms and Pythagoras' Theorem. That doesn't mean there's a total contradiction between them.
There are no logical steps between 'George W Bush was the President of the United States in 2001' and 'Barack Obama was the President of the United States in 2009'. That doesn't mean there two statements are a total contradiction.

You've said that Christian theology is internally consistent if you believe in it. Christian theology believes that Jesus Christ is the Jewish Yahweh. So is that a total contradiction? Or is it internally consistent? Which is it?

quote:
I'm applying the idea that to have an logical argument you must have steps that follow on from each other - something which is impossible if you start from Yahweh and know nothing of Jesus Christ, but somehow invent him in a puff of logic.

We know about the incarnation because God has broken into our understanding. Not because we reasoned him by logic.
I think you've been watching too much Sherlock. The great error of Conan Doyle was to assume that it is possible to find so much evidence and be able to dismiss so much other evidence that one, startling, conclusion was the only one left. Life is not like that, and religion certainly is not.
 
Posted by Yorick (# 12169) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
...I have illustrated that for you with an analogy before, an analogy which you found "illuminating" concerning the Incarnation. So is this here a case of memory loss, or have new questions arisen for you?
Wow. You remembered that post, from four years ago?

Yeah, it was a case of memory loss rather than new questions*, but reading it again I still find it illuminating, as is your Dracula thing. Thanks, IngoB.

* My memory isn't what it was. I recently lost my car keys. I eventually abandoned my search and went to make myself a gin and tonic, but immediately found them when I went to get some ice from the freezer. So there's another paradox! On one hand, if you didn't need ice for a gin and tonic it would take you ages to chance upon your car keys in the freezer, but on the other hand you wouldn't so urgently need a gin and tonic if you hadn't been searching frantically for your car keys.
 
Posted by Pearl B4 Swine (# 11451) on :
 
Dafyd says:
Christian theology believes that Jesus Christ is the Jewish Yahweh.

Am I the only one not aware of this? Does this have to do with our understanding of the Trinity? That God-creator, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit were all lumped together into a 'Yahweh'?

Alas poor Yorick. How your keys hid themselves in the freezer seems a very spooky thing. Next time you lose something, try this appeal to St Anthony:
Tony, Tony, come around!
Something's lost and can't be found.

Works for me.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Don't know if you're the only one, but yes, all three persons of the Trinity have a claim (severally and jointly) to the name YHWH (whether you want to say Yahweh or Jehovah or LORD is basically up to you and your tradition). Jesus in fact winds up quite a few people in the Gospels when he insists on referring to himself as "I AM" (which is the Greek version of YHWH), and which is basically ungrammatical when he says it in John 8:58, so you know he did it on purpose: "Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” And in the temple, too! He came <that> close to getting stoned for blasphemy.

[ 03. March 2014, 16:26: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Pearl B4 Swine:
Dafyd says:
Christian theology believes that Jesus Christ is the Jewish Yahweh.

Am I the only one not aware of this? Does this have to do with our understanding of the Trinity? That God-creator, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit were all lumped together into a 'Yahweh'?
In Christian theology, God is one God in three persons.(*) From the perspective of Christianity, if somebody talks about God they are talking about the one God, who exists as three persons. I wouldn't say 'lumped together', because the three persons aren't just lumped together as one God; they really are one God.
So we don't say that only the Father is the creator-God; the Second Person of the Trinity, that becomes incarnate as Jesus Christ, is the Word through whom all things were made without whom nothing that was made was made. Likewise, the one who gives 'I am that I am' as a name to Moses from the burning bush is the one God who is in three persons.

*) Define 'God', define 'persons'; and also 'one', 'in', and 'three' for that matter.
 
Posted by Pearl B4 Swine (# 11451) on :
 
Thank you for your most informative explanation of "trinity". "Persons", in this context means aspects, or functions. I took your statement to mean that Jesus Christ is the whole totality of Yaweh.

I'm going to use my big dictionary to check on my understanding of 'one'(1), 'in' and 'three'(3). Purgatory is certainly not the place for me. This is not a flounce; it is a graceful backing out of the way.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Pearl B4 Swine:
Thank you for your most informative explanation of "trinity". "Persons", in this context means aspects, or functions. I took your statement to mean that Jesus Christ is the whole totality of Yaweh.
In the case of the Trinity, I think the way to understand orthodoxy is to start from one or other of two opposite heresies, and then approach orthodoxy which lies between them. The two heresies in question are modalism, which states that the three persons aren't really in God but are temporary aspects that God adopts, and tritheism which asserts that the persons are three separate entities. The orthodox Christian doctrine of God is the point that lies between the two approaches. So that orthodox belief can't be stated in itself but only by stating one side and then the other.
I think saying that the persons are functions or aspects on its own is a bit on the modalist side of the line; one would need to nudge over a bit.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Pearl B4 Swine:
I took your statement to mean that Jesus Christ is the whole totality of Yaweh.
I think saying that the persons are functions or aspects on its own is a bit on the modalist side of the line; one would need to nudge over a bit.
A better way to put it, in my view, is what Paul stated:
quote:
2.Colossians 2:9 "For in Jesus Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily."
Or as stated in the Athanasian Creed:
quote:
"For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man; so God and Man is one Christ."
We move away from both modalism and tri-theism if we see the trinity within Jesus, like the soul, body and activity of a single individual.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
We move away from both modalism and tri-theism if we see the trinity within Jesus, like the soul, body and activity of a single individual.
In traditional chalcedonian Christianity, God would be three persons even if God had never become incarnate. Only the Second Person of the Trinity becomes incarnate.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
We move away from both modalism and tri-theism if we see the trinity within Jesus, like the soul, body and activity of a single individual.
In traditional chalcedonian Christianity, God would be three persons even if God had never become incarnate. Only the Second Person of the Trinity becomes incarnate.
Yes, of course. I had never thought of it that way.

I guess this shows how subtle and tricky tri-theism is. [Paranoid]
 


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