Posted on 06/05/2018 1:43:53 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” [I Corinthians 13:12]
I first craved to be a man after God’s own heart at 5. I was debating theologians at a private Christian school by 16. At 19 three ordained ministers told me I knew and understood the Bible better than they.
The longer I live, the less I am interested in theology. It is fallen human reasoning, yet each one purports to be pure and true doctrine.
Theee is no Unified Field Theory; Einstein sought for it in vain. There is no perfect theology; Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, Arminius, Simons, Zwingli, Wesley, Molinos, et al, all asserted it in vain: Each said true things, and false things. Yes, some were closer to the truth more frequently than others.
There is the Word of God, and the Living Word, Jesus Christ. The rest are the intellectual perambulations of finite, fallen human beings. Are they without merit? No. I am a thinker, I do not disdain meditation. I denounce the arrogance of assuming that any one of them perfectly demarcated the entire meaning of the Living Word.
Theology inherently strives to reduce the infinite to finite terms - hence paradox.
Those paradoxes are made whole in the Person of Christ.
“Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?” [I Corinthians 1: 12, 13]
“Theee...” = There...
Well said.
(I once played two roles in a college rendition of The Great Divorce scripted by an ICF leader. We ran into copyright problems after the fact out of ignorance. It was well received, all three performances. I played the Tragedian, and wore an authentic 19th Century “tuxedo”; it was woolen, and I sweltered.)
We can’t but crudely at best imagine “being God” and looking “across” events rather than “along” events. When, as an engineering student studying mathematics, I encountered the Laplace transform, I encountered something that would later make sense to me as yet another symbol of looking “across” time. It is derived as the result of a mathematical integral of a convolution. It expresses certain physical events in a “deeper depth” than the time domain can. When Lewis depicted existence in terms of the stationary figures standing round the chessboard with pieces corresponding to themselves moving, he was attempting to do something of the sort. Ironically, math was Lewis’ worst subject, and arithmetic threw him for a loop. He wouldn’t have come within miles of algebra, let alone calculus. Had Lewis known calculus, he would have almost doubtless seen the analogy in the Laplace transform.
So, once we believe God has a way to look “across” time (and space, for that matter), then we can again crudely try to depict it by positing something like Molina’s concept of middle knowledge. I say something like, because it hasn’t been anything but mortal history that has presented Christendom with such alternatives after the fact, and they don’t pop at us as such out of scripture or even tradition. The increasingly analytical bent of humanity has pressed it to try to account analytically for paradoxes. And we yet still have paradoxes even in supposedly exact physics, like the humorously called “wavicle,” the wave-particle. We need have no fear, however, that God has failed to work it out to a “T” in His own private realm.
That is why I do not expect an uncontested UFT: No mathematical equation can encompass all reality, just as no theology can encompass all truth. The best we finite mortals can do is to produce a reasonable approximation.
I have an unfinished monograph on this subject: Models are not Real (obvious, yet overlooked). Mathematicians and physicists continually fall into the same trap as theologians: looking for the perfect description of Reality, thus confusing the Model with the Real.
Only a reflexive syllogism qualifies as that (I am that I am; to wit, I Am that I Am: The Lord of Creation.)
When one falls into that trap, then all models become false or defective except one, rather than all being relatively more or less useful.
My favorite example from my nerdly childhood: A 1/72 P-51 is 100% a model, just as is a 1/48 P-51, even though the latter is capable of greater accuracy. Both are wholly models. The 1/72 does not lose any of its “modelness” because it is simpler; it only loses some accuracy. The smaller scale one is not, say, 50% a model by comparison; it is as much a model as the other; further, both are wholly not equatable with the real. (Even a 1/1 P-51 model is not real if it is not in fact an actual P-51.)
The Bohr Atom does not lose any of its “modelness” just because it is surpassed in sophistication by Orbital Theory or Quantum Mechanics. It is not False to their True; it is simply less accurate, but still useful. I would not use QM to describe atomic reality to a young child. (I do not even like to use it for myself!) I love the Bohr Atom for such an application.
(Please do not confuse the above argument with advocacy of moral relativism, which I entirely reject.)
Hence: Depart from me. I do not know you.
True enough. Moral approximation isn’t the same as moral relativism. The former doesn’t try to create its own little world; the latter does.
Or perhaps, “was not knowing you.” With a nod to omniscience in this sense. Other translations put it “I never knew you.” I’ve seen enough from the Calvinist side to say don’t sweat that you might in principle fall into and out of a sealed salvation. Never knew is never knew. No real wiggle room there. I’ve also seen enough from the Arminian side to say that if there is no element of volition involved, it’s not real either. In between now and the door in time to eternity we know as the moment of death, are any number of messy moments in which we may not even understand ourselves. But God will understand us, and explain us to ourselves when the occasion is right.
And this is one way in which having a charitable attitude matters. Because then we are passing on the grace of God to the world, and we will be viewed charitably by God when we are explained in the rear view mirror, pointing up every investment Christ had made in our case on our behalf.
You may know this, but:
Tolkien, a Catholic, shared a passion for Nordic Mythology with Lewis. They bonded over this before Lewis converted.
Lewis dedicated The Screwtape Letters to JRRT. He also stated that Elwin Ransom of the so-called Space Trilogy, a philologist, was based upon JRRT.
In the foreword to the third volume, That Hideous Strength, he has a footnote alluding to an unpublished manuscript related to Atlantis by his friend, JRRT. Although not stated, that manuscript is The Silmarillion, which was published posthumously by JRRT’s son, Christopher, who was his father’s primary sounding board on the trilogy, as Tolkien sent chapters to his son to read and respond while he was with the RAF in Africa in WWII.
Clearly, for both Tolkien and Lewis, Numenor = Atlantis. Since Akallabeth (Part IV of IV) deals with Numenor and its downfall in the Second Age, that is the portion of The Silmarillion specifically referenced by Lewis.
It's profoundly true!
The pastor that teaches our Sunday school class is really bright. Knows lots of stuff. He is also very fond of not trying to get too smart and try to explain everything. Some things he is very “This is the way that it is.” Sometimes he’ll just leave it as “The Bible doesn’t say. We don’t know.” And other times he chalks it up to one of Heaven’s mysteries.
And often it is summed up by something like “It’s not about YOU. It is about God. Yes God wants to bless you, and He loves you. But ultimately - it is ‘HIS will be done.’ Whether it is Jesus on the cross, or the first thousands of missionaries that died in Africa before saving a single soul - it is about GOD’s will.”
Thanks!!!!
Thanks!!!!
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