Week 3 SAB Study: Does God Ever Repent?

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Originally posted by vistesd
[b]Yes, and this has generally been where I grapple with it. I don’t know what “above and independent” mean in T(4). Outside and separate? This goes, I think, to the question of God as a being versus the ground of being (or, in Paul Tillich’s trinitarian formula, ground-of-being, power-of-being and being- ...[text shortened]... that which is known.

We no longer ask "What do we know"; instead we ask "How do we know".

Re Aquinas: I am going to need to work on this one awhile. So, stimulated my thinking you have…. 🙂 But may not have a response soon…

Originally posted by Pawnokeyhole
I agree that there is nothing glib about calling some things a mystery. Mysteries abound. And if God exists, he would certainly be mysterious.

However, I do think that some people have been too glib in asserting that God's being both accessible and transcendent is a mystery when it may entail a logical contradiction. Without explicating the matter a ...[text shortened]... ll, maybe. But also, maybe not. I see a temptation to lapse into woolly-headed mysticism here.

Excuse me: the last line of the second paragraph should have read "then HE could not be a superperson, as HE would not be lodged in time and space."

And that "report" should be "retort". Sheesh!

Originally posted by vistesd
Well put: identifies the problem clearly, I think.

I have an experience—let’s say of the wind on my face. I describe it to you in words, perhaps cool and dry and pleasant. I have described the sensations as I identify them (cool and ...[text shortened]... hism) of….

“I wish I could give you this pleasant breeze.” 🙂

Well, I don't mind reality being a mystery. Nor am I troubled by the fact that the qualitative nature of all experience partly eludes verbal articulation.

However, what I do mind is the glib assertion that God can very naturally and easily be both partly effable and partly ineffable, and that any difficulty we have understanding this is because it is a just mystery. I think it may not be logically possible for something to be both effable and ineffable at the same time.

Originally posted by vistesd
Here is my dictionary definition of ineffable: 1. incapable of being expressed or described in words; inexpressible. 2. not to be spoken because of its sacredness.

Definition 1 is the one we’re talking about here.

I would propose that we are not speaking here of an attribute of God (however you think of that God—a being, the ground of being, etc.). ...[text shortened]... e versus immanence

2) accessibility versus inaccessibility

3) effable versus ineffable

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I really think we have been addressing three things here:

1) transcendence versus immanence
2) accessibility versus inaccessibility
3) effable versus ineffable
===============

It seems to me that transcendence and ineffability mutually imply one another, as do accessibility and effability. I am not making any claims about immanence.

Originally posted by Pawnokeyhole
It seems to me that transcendence and ineffability mutually imply one another,

Not directly.

If you're using the sense T(3b) (refer previous page), then the transcendent being is (by definition) inaccessible/unknowable and hence ineffable.

If you use T(4), however, there is no reason to suppose that a transcendent being is inaccessible (unless you are presuming that humans cannot know that which is not of the material world) and hence ineffable.

Interestingly, if you use T(2), then the transcendent being is inaccessible and hence ineffable under normal circumstances, but may become accessible under extraordinary circumstances.

as do accessibility and effability.

Inaccessibility implies ineffability, but the converse is not necessarily true. e.g. I might see a beautiful woman but find it nearly impossible to describe her beauty to another person.

Originally posted by Pawnokeyhole
Well, I don't mind reality being a mystery. Nor am I troubled by the fact that the qualitative nature of all experience partly eludes verbal articulation.

However, what I do mind is the glib assertion that God can very naturally and easily be both partly effable and partly ineffable, and that any difficulty we have understanding this is because it ...[text shortened]... y not be logically possible for something to be both effable and ineffable at the same time.

Well, I don't mind reality being a mystery. Nor am I troubled by the fact that the qualitative nature of all experience partly eludes verbal articulation.

I would only go a bit further. (1) I relish the proposition that reality is at bottom mysterious, because it always leaves me something to try and search out—like the Hydra, every time you cut off one head of the mystery, another grows in its place. This may be purely subjective, and may arise from some pre-conscious “aesthetic” predilection.

(2) If by “partly eludes” you mean “eludes all but a partial” articulation, we are in agreement. There may be some things in the “qualitative nature of all experience” that can be articulated (“mapped out&rdquo😉 completely—but I doubt it.

However, what I do mind is the glib assertion that God can very naturally and easily be both partly effable and partly ineffable, and that any difficulty we have understanding this is because it is a just mystery. I think it may not be logically possible for something to be both effable and ineffable at the same time.

This word “glib” keeps coming back; and I don’t think you are simply being accusatory—I take it more as challenging me to look deeper at my own position. I hope I do that.

Let me add that any “assertion” I make about “God” (or the ground of being, or the Brahman, or the Tao, or the like) ought to be understood, to paraphrase Niels Bohr, as a question. I will try to keep that clear.

With that said. Again, I’m not sure what you mean by “partly effable and partly ineffable.” How well does the map “capture” the territory? As with my comments on the mystery, when pressed, I come down on the side of ultimately “ineffable,” and simply try not to confuse the “map” (articulation, description, etc.) with the territory. My experience of life is ultimately ineffable—even my mental maps made for myself do not capture it wholly; they are all partial. Nevertheless, here we are, sharing maps with each other…

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Originally posted by vistesd
[b]Yes, and this has generally been where I grapple with it. I don’t know what “above and independent” mean in T(4). Outside and separate? This goes, I think, to the question of God as a ...[text shortened]... longer ask "What do we know"; instead we ask "How do we know".

[/b]I am finding the word “transcendent,” as defined, very limiting here. I may have to drop it altogether. To ask a “bottom up” question: Is the whole more than the sum of its parts, and if so, how? To ask a “top down” question: Can any being be separate from its ground and source?

If Aquinas is saying that God can be ground-of-being and being-itself (as in Tillich), then I have no argument to make. But God as “a being,” somehow radically separate from other “beings”—well, then I fall somewhere in the monistic (or, at the very least, panentheistic) camp (Tillich, I think too, has been accused of that).

Originally posted by Pawnokeyhole
I agree that there is nothing glib about calling some things a mystery. Mysteries abound. And if God exists, he would certainly be mysterious.

However, I do think that some people have been too glib in asserting that God's being both accessible and transcendent is a mystery when it may entail a logical contradiction. Without explicating the matter a ...[text shortened]... ll, maybe. But also, maybe not. I see a temptation to lapse into woolly-headed mysticism here.

I see a temptation to lapse into woolly-headed mysticism here.

“Mysticsm” is a very broad term, and much abused I think. If Zen Buddhism is “mysticism,” then, despite it’s use of paradoxical riddles called koans, it is a most un-wooly-headed affair. I suspect that it is the attempts of mystics (for terrible lack of a better term) to describe, define and “fence in” their experiences that can get pretty wooly, though.

Originally posted by vistesd
I am finding the word “transcendent,” as defined, very limiting here. I may have to drop it altogether. To ask a “bottom up” question: Is the whole more than the sum of its parts, and if so, how? To ask a “top down” question: Can any being be separate from its ground and source?

There is the question of separate-ness (which you've asked) and the question of distinct-ness (you haven't mentioned this, but I think it's relevant).

Let me start with an analogy (which has its flaws in this context, but is a useful place to start anyhow) - suppose God were like a pregnant mother and we were like the child in the womb. Clearly, the child derives its life/existence from the mother and is completely at the mercy of the mother. It is not separate(d) from the mother in the sense of being completely independent, but it is a distinct being nevertheless. Indeed, the child has a certain autonomy of action as well (it can kick or turn around at will).

This is really just intended to try and answer the top-down question.

If Aquinas is saying that God can be ground-of-being and being-itself (as in Tillich), then I have no argument to make. But God as “a being,” somehow radically separate from other “beings”—well, then I fall somewhere in the monistic (or, at the very least, panentheistic) camp (Tillich, I think too, has been accused of that).


A distinction must be drawn between God as ground-of-being (in the sense of being/ens being impossible without God) and God as being-itself. As seen in the classical formulation, being/ens is a combination of two factors - essence/essentia and existence/esse. What Aquinas said was that God's essence was Existence itself, but God's being is not the same as his essence.

To put it another way, I am a being because I have an essence (lucifershammer-ness) that exists. My being is not identical with my essence, although the latter is a critical component of the former. My essence includes my humanity (which I share with all humans), but it also includes my individuality (which I don't).

I need to rush to a meeting now, but does any of this make sense so far? Or am I just shooting blanks?

Let me start with an analogy (which has its flaws in this context, but is a useful place to start anyhow) - suppose God were like a pregnant mother and we were like the child in the womb. Clearly, the child derives its life/existence from the mother and is completely at the mercy of the mother. It is not separate(d) from the mother in the sense of being completely independent, but it is a distinct being nevertheless. Indeed, the child has a certain autonomy of action as well (it can kick or turn around at will).

I like this analogy, but I’m going to change it, only for fear that someone is going to start talking about birth as the “fall” from the “womb” and we’re all trying to… So—

There is a fish in the ocean. For the sake of this analogy (and to avoid discussions of biology, evolution, etc., here) let us say that the fish not only “derives” its life/existence from the ocean (continually), but also that the fish is made out of elements of the ocean—or that “original fish” is engendered from the ocean. (I understand that this is not the “standard” creation-model, but it does have its strains in Judeo-Christian understanding—e.g., with Eckhart.) The fish has a distinctiveness in existence.

Now, there is a Zen parable: One day a young fish looks at her mother and says, “So. When are you going to show me this ocean you’re always talking about.”

I would say that this analogy fairly well describes my experience and understanding.

[NOTE: A question, which I don’t want to really discuss here, but just mention, is whether or not the ocean in this analogy is conscious, has purpose, etc. A Vedantist might say no; a Kashmiri Shaivite says yes; a Zen Buddhist might not say anything at all. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition says yes. I just want to say that I understand that the limits of my analogy leaves this question in abeyance.]

A distinction must be drawn between God as ground-of-being (in the sense of being/ens being impossible without God) and God as being-itself. As seen in the classical formulation, being/ens is a combination of two factors - essence/essentia and existence/esse. What Aquinas said was that God's essence was Existence itself, but God's being is not the same as his essence.

To put it another way, I am a being because I have an essence (lucifershammer-ness) that exists. My being is not identical with my essence, although the latter is a critical component of the former. My essence includes my humanity (which I share with all humans), but it also includes my individuality (which I don't).

Does anything have essence without existence? Unless you are using the terms in a “figure/ground” sense? Is there any such thing as lucifershammer-ness that does not include your existence? (Did not Kant say that we simply can’t find any “thing-in-itself?&rdquo😉 With all due respect to St. Thomas, I do not find this metaphysical “parsing” to be helpful—again, unless we can talk in terms of figure/ground.

Originally posted by vistesd
Does anything have essence without existence? Unless you are using the terms in a “figure/ground” sense? Is there any such thing as lucifershammer-ness that does not include your existence? (Did not Kant say that we simply can’t find any “thing-in-itself?&rdquo😉 With all due respect to St. Thomas, I do not find this metaphysical “parsing” to be helpful—again, unless we can talk in terms of figure/ground.

I am not completely certain what you mean by figure/ground, so it would be helpful if you could define it as clearly as possible.

In terms of essence without existence, one has to recognise that there are several levels of existence/being. If we restrict ourselves to existence as referring to empirical existence (i.e. that which can be known to us through our senses or extensions thereof), then one can identify Ideas as being essences without necessary existence. For instance, the essences of John Galt or Tom Sawyer do not have empirical existence (or these characters would've been actual beings).

When Kant says that we cannot find a thing-in-itself, is he referring to the existence of the thing-in-itself, or our inability to know the thing-in-itself, or our inability to know for certain whether our understanding of the thing-in-itself corresponds to reality?