This post is to capture to this point an email exchange I have been having with Kristor concerning what Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems might tell us reality, about ourselves, and about God. We intend to continue our discussion in the comments section of this OP.
For the most part, I'll try to represent our exchange in chronological order. But sometimes, arranging things in thematic order will override chronological order. And, the part of the exchange I'll duplicate first is the last part of the exchange to this point.
Ilíon: What do you think of me turning our exchange up to this point into a post on my blog, and then continuing the discussion as comments to it?
Kristor: Sure, that would be terrific. Is it OK if I link to it from Orthosphere?
Ilíon: Of course that would be OK.
Kristor: OK, this is great. I think a lot of people could benefit from watching the two of us try to figure this out with each other. It is not often that you get equally orthodox yet divergent and well informed perspectives that are both working together to seek understanding (as opposed to crushing each other). Hugely valuable, as a counterpoint to our wicked adversarial environing culture.
Mentioned you in a post about Godel
This conversation was initiated by an email to me from Kristor:
Kristor: [Mentioned you in a post about Godel] And would be happy of any criticisms you might want to offer. If you have the time, of course:
Ilíon: Related to Godel ... I suspect that the Incarnation and the Passion ... and indeed, the Creation ... were not primarily about *us*, but rather about the Godhead. The Creation is necessitated by the Incarnation, which is necessitated by the Passion. And the Passion is the proof that there is no contradiction within the Godhead.
Kristor: OK, this totally piques my interest. I'd be in your debt if you fleshed it out a bit. The closest I've gotten to it is the reflection that Creation is implicit in the divine nature - it's the sort of thing that a good God would do, by his nature - and that the Fall as being an almost certain eventuality for any created order meant that the Atonement would be necessary, so that the Passion would be needed, so that the Incarnation would be needed. But I'm fascinated to find what I've missed in not seeing that the Passion is implicit in the divine nature directly. I very much want to find out.
A digression about pronouns ... and about what actually exists
While I didn't mention this to Kristor, I constantly see supposed conservative Christians use "she" when correct English calls for "he" ... and their rationales, when I "call" them on it, are straight out of the leftist playbook. So, I'm hyper-critical of any use of "she" when "he" is called for.
Also, the reason I finally decided to include this digression is because it is an example of what Kristor said: "It is not often that you get equally orthodox yet divergent and well informed perspectives that are both working together to seek understanding (as opposed to crushing each other)."
Ilíon (quoting and criticizing a single sentence of Kristor's post): ="Following on the same arguments, the human person is not exhaustively specified by any number of her past physical aspects."=
That use of "she/her" where correct English usage calls for "he/his" is mere feminist-pandering; it's "male virtue signaling", in that *women* (except perhaps a very few of the more outlandish man-haters) don't go out of their way to use "she" when "he" is correct.
Kristor: I can see why you took it that way, but it was not motivated that way. I've been working for a couple years now on the notion that relations of dominance are gendered, with the dominant agent being masculine and the non-dominant being feminine. It is an extension of the ancient idea that the father's seed is the source of all the information that informs the development of the foetus, which was extended even by ancient authors - particularly among the Greek Fathers - to the notion that God plants the forms of creatures in otherwise formless matter: these seeds of future creaturely development were and are called lógoi spermatokoi.
I've been ruminating on this notion for some time, and find it fruitful, and that it explains a lot.
So, the human person is masculine in respect to its subsidiaries (such as the face), and feminine in respect to its supersidiaries (such as the spirit). The human creature is masculine in respect to his servants, and feminine in respect to the Lord.
This notion is explicit in ecclesiological diction: the Church is feminine, Christ is her bridegroom. Looking back, I realize that my interest in the idea started with this striking locution.
NB the difference between sex and gender; between male and female on the one hand, and masculine and feminine on the other. An army of men is feminine in respect to her commanding officer, masculine in respect to the territory it controls. Ships are feminine in respect to their sailors, but this is of course not to say that ships are female.
Anyway, the idea is still too murky in my mind for me to have written about it anywhere but in my journal, and now in this message. But I find that it has begun to permeate my use of language. I'm content to watch that happen, and see what order suggests itself from the result.
The feminists would be horrified at the idea. They want to demolish both sex and gender, in part because both sex and gender pick out sorts of dominance relations, which they abhor above all things. I'm going the opposite way, and in calling dominants masculine am accurately reflecting both the ontological reality and the Latin gender of "dominus."
PS: in a nutshell, the agent which is the source of the logos of a thing is masculine in respect to that thing, and that thing - even though it be male, and manifest masculine virtues - is feminine in respect to the agent who is the source of its logos.
PPS: OK, the permeation of my diction by the notion I have been discussing is a work in progress. I should have written:
In a nutshell, the agent who is the source of the logos of a thing is masculine in respect to that thing, and that thing – even though it be male, and manifest masculine virtues – is feminine in respect to the agent who is the source of her logos.
What, given the foregoing, is the proper application of the third person? I suppose (not having considered the question before this very moment) that the third person would be apt to things that are not in themselves recipient of a logos particular to themselves, such as rocks. A rock has a form, but apart from the properties thereof which derive from the essential forms of its atomic and molecular constituents, that form is largely adventitious. The shape of a bit of granite does not depend so much upon its granitic nature as upon its contingent adventures. The bit of granite is not, i.e., a true entity. It is, rather, a congeries of entities: a heap that is evolving slowly.
Ilíon: A hunk of granite -- or an entire planet (or star) -- is wholly lacking in *identity*. So, can such things truly be said even to exist?
Kristor: It does not seem to me that a hunk of granite is an actual entity. It is, again, just a slow heap. We can refer to a heap or a hunk of granite, but the denotation is a heuristic only.
Interestingly, on nominalism, all denotations are heuristics only. Never thought of that.
I’m not so sure about planets and stars. It seems to me that some of them might be actual entities; might be embodiments of living spirits. I’m inclined to think that homeostasis might be a pretty good indication of life - albeit that I am not totally clear on what life is.
[This particular digression went no further. My questioning of whether a rock, or a planet, or a star, can truly be said to exist is rooted in some past ruminations on the Paradox of Theseus' Ship.]
On to the Main Event: Creation; Incarnation; Passion: God's Glory
Kristor: Please understand that, regardless of what you might have to say about my recent essay on Gödel, and regardless of whether indeed you have any reactions at all of a more, I don't know, big character (which I very much want to hear about, if such there be); nevertheless, I am absolutely with child to hear your notions of how the Passion is implicit logically in the Divine Nature. On pins and needles. I woke up at 3 AM this morning wondering about it.
No pressure!
Ilíon: This could take several exchanges between us as we try together to work through the as yet undeveloped idea: I never did write up my thoughts to that point, and so I haven't fully fleshed-out the idea. At the same time, we two have briefly discussed some of the background thought on the present matter; namely my suspicion (which you believe to be logically impossible) that Christ really was tempted by sin, as asserted in Scripture -- and, as a logical matter, really might have fallen to sin.
The Bible speaks many times of God having glory, or of this or that action or attribute of God resounding to his glory. And, as I recall (though I can't quickly locate where) that he does what he does, including the Creation, for his own glory.
But, what does "glory" mean to God? Whose opinion of him matters so much to him as to resound in glory? Clearly, it cannot be the opinion of any creature. And, as God has no peer, it cannot be the opinion of any other being but God himself: so, he does what he does for his own reasons, related to his own triune nature, and which reasons may or may not be comprehensible to creatures. The history of the world is The Story of God: the Creation is about God, not about us; the Incarnation is about God, not about us; the Passion/Crucifixion is about God, not about us; the Resurrection is about God, not about us. Yet, in his glory and mercy and grace, he extends all these things also to be about us.
Now, Scripture asserts that Jesus was tempted in all ways, just as we are. It seems to me that that assertion logically entails that Jesus *might have* surrendered to at least one of those temptations, and thus *might have* sinned.
For instance, when the Satan spread out all the kingdoms of the world before Jesus, and claimed that he'd give them to him if only Jesus would bow down and worship him, the temptation wasn't in the bowing down and worshiping of Satan; that was only the "payload", as it were. No, the temptation was in the offer of being given dominion over all the kingdoms of the world. But, this was a temptation not as it would have been to most human persons, that is, as an appeal to our vainglory, but rather it was a temptation to "take the easy way" to achieve one of the goals of the Son's mission in taking on flesh.
Now, if, as I believe, Scripture's word usage and the logic of using those words dictates that the Second Person *might have* sinned, what does that *mean*? It means that there would be a contradiction within the Godhead. But God is capital-T Truth, and God is "the ground of all being". Expanding on arguments you have presented, if the Second Person *had* sinned, and thus there were contradiction within the Godhead, then Truth is not truth and Being is not being. If Jesus had sinned, then *all things* would be unmade, would *never have been* made (as a side note, I strongly suspect that that was the Satan's objective). If Jesus had sinned, then God themself (*) -- Being Itself -- would not be.
As I recall from our previous discussions, you believe that the reasoning I've laid out above is flawed.
Moving on, this is where Godel comes in.
On second thought, and as this note is getting lengthy, let's save Godel for another time. Why don't we first explore the ideas above to test whether they are sound or flawed?
(*) how is that for an attempt to express the plurality-in-unity of the Godhead? Saying "God himself" when speaking of the Father seems to me to be correct; but, saying "God himself" when speaking of the Trinity has always stuck in my craw, and so I just now thought of saying "God themself".
Another Digression: "Themself" or "Himselves"?
Kristor: Hah! I like it. But, wouldn’t it be “God themselves”?
Ilíon: I had initially written "God themselves", but on thinking about it, changed it to "God themself".
I can see your point, in that God is a plurality of persons, but "themselves" in normal English denotes a plurality of beings/entities. In our experience *as* human beings, a 'being' and a 'self' are co-extensive. But, does that hold true in all possible worlds?
If one wishes to create a new pronoun to avoid referring to the *Trinity* as "God himself", perhaps is should be "God himselves"?
God is one being; God is three persons. God certainly has selfhood; but is the Trinity one self (i.e. "God themself"), or is each Person a self (i.e. "God himselves")?
Kristor: Well, for years now I have understood "person" to mean - literally - "for + knowledge." From pro + sopon. And I can't think of a way to avoid modalism except by taking the persons to be each subjects of such knowledge - primordially, of each other. That way the persons are truly different from each other, rather than being only modes of the Godhead. And I can't conceive of a subject of knowledge - a knower - other than as a self.
I don't know the first thing about Hebrew, but from what I've read the plural noun elohim takes singular verbs when it is used to denote the Most High.
[As an after-the-fact addendum to this digression, have you ever noticed that the very people who demand that we normal/sane persons "honor the pronouns" of mentally unstable and/or insane persons frequently decline to themselves "honor the pronoun" by which the God has chosen to be revealed to mankind?]
Back to the Topic
Kristor: I think you are right that the entire creation and its redemption are about God. I have read the suggestion that God creates in virtue of his love, or of his overflowing goodness, and both of those notions seem right so far as they go. But they too are ultimately urges (if that’s the right term – I doubt that it is) internal to God. God is simple, so all his act is entirely in, of, and about himself. We creatures get to participate in that act; in it we live, move, and have being. But we are as it were along for the ride that is really his; like children allowed to ride along with their father on a business trip.
As for glory, again, I think you are spot on. God couldn’t have created in order to make himself bigger or more powerful, because he’s infinite and omnipotent by nature. Nor could he have created to make himself more glorious, though, because by nature he is Beauty per se, and glory is a sort of beauty: it is brilliance and purity; or the brilliance of purity, which is to say, of maximal perfection.
So, yeah, I think you are right: the whole created order, and God’s action within it, is about God. It makes perfect sense.
I don’t remember our discussion about whether Jesus could be tempted, or could sin. I do vaguely remember discussing “lead us not into temptation,” but I don’t remember the details.
It seems to me that you have provided a demonstration that Jesus could not sin:
… if … Scripture’s word usage and the logic of using those words dictates that the Second Person *might have* sinned, what does that *mean*? It means that there would be a contradiction within the Godhead.
I think that sums it up. Jesus is God, and God cannot sin without ceasing to be God, which is an act impossible to a necessary being. I think your reasoning is bulletproof.
The question then is how to interpret Hebrews 4:15:
For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
Jesus can be tempted, in that he can hear the Satan’s offer, can understand its significance and feel its attractions, and so forth. So he can understand our predicament. But he can’t fall into sin. Likewise, Jesus can be lied to, but cannot be deceived. Sin is falsehood enacted. Jesus can’t credit a falsehood, because he is omniscient. So nor can he act in any way contrary to the Truth that he perfectly knows.
This is right in line with Hebrews 2:18:
For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.
Jesus suffers the temptation: he is aware of it, indeed perfectly so; just as he is perfectly aware of the character of the false world represented to him in a creaturely lie. But he cannot fall into sin, just as he cannot be deceived.
The thing I don’t quite get is how the Satan could be so stupid as to think he had a shot at turning the Lógos to his own side. I have read explanations to the effect that Lucifer thought Jesus was only the worldly Messiah expected by most contemporaneous Hebrews, and had no idea he was dealing with the Lógos. But that doesn’t quite cut it for me. Lucifer is a seraph, after all. Before he Fell, he could see the whole of cosmic history laid out before him like a tapestry. He had to have known the score.
The notion that Lucifer was in the dark about Jesus falls also before the fact that the demons Jesus exorcised all seem to have known exactly who he was, before he even opened his mouth. And Lucifer must have known that his minions were being cast out, instantly, at a glance from Jesus. Anne Catherine Emmerich reports that Jesus exorcised hundreds and hundreds of people in the course of his public ministry. His powers as an exorcist were common knowledge in Judea and Galilee. Even his disciples – even those who were not his disciples – were casting out demons in his Name.
The only way I have been able to find a way out of that thicket is to suppose that his Fall radically addled Lucifer’s wits, and darkened his mind, so that he could no longer remember seeing things the way he had before he Fell. He must be nuts, right? I mean, the Church has been preaching the identity of Jesus and the Lógos for thousands of years now, so the demons certainly know the score. Yet they keep up with their hopeless war.
The other thing that bugs me is that one of the things Lucifer would have had to see in cosmic history prior to his Fall was … his Fall. Was he doomed?
Aquinas gets around this difficulty with the answer that the angels all made permanent decisions for or against YHWH in the very first moment of their existence. I suppose that works if the angels are essentially immaterial, and only accidentally corporeal. But it just feels weak.
I’m still struggling with these issues.
Thanks for the work you put into your message.
Ilíon: =="We creatures get to participate in that act; in it we live, move, and have being. But we are as it were along for the ride that is really his; like children allowed to ride along with their father on a business trip."==
That's exactly what I was getting at, and I almost said something similar to "we are as it were along for the ride that is really his".
In the Creation, God graces us with being in the first place; in the Incarnation, God graces us with beholding him as he is; in the Passion/Crucifixion, God graces us with reconciliation; in the Resurrection, God graces us with the *fullness* of being. These acts or events are *about* the Godhead ... and we are *graced* to participate in and benefit from them.
=="I think that sums it up. Jesus is God, and God cannot sin without ceasing to be God, which is an act impossible to a necessary being. I think your reasoning is bulletproof."==
Ah, but *is* God the Necessary Being? Please don't misunderstand, I fully agree with you that the God is the Necessary Being. BUT, I strongly suspect that that is the issue being put to the test in the Creation, Incarnation, and Crucifixion (and fully demonstrated in the Resurrection).
[Side Note: I strongly suspect, following on ruminations about what Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems might hint at about God -- keeping in mind that these theorems no more strictly apply to the Divine Persons than they do to human persons -- that the *point* of the Crucifixion, and thus of the Incarnation, and thus of the Creation, is that the Triune God is "putting God to the test", as it were, demonstrating that there is no contradiction within the Godhead.]
As I said in the last post, the history of the world is God's Story; God has done these things for God's own glory. But, to what end, or at any rate to what end in terms which I can comprehend? I more than suspect that what Creation, and all that follows from it, is about is that the God is putting the Godhead to the test: the God is demonstration/proving that there is no contradiction within the Godhead: "We are indeed the Necessary Being".
=="Jesus can be tempted, in that he can hear the Satan’s offer, can understand its significance and feel its attractions, and so forth. So he can understand our predicament. But he can’t fall into sin."==
It's a matter that is easy to misstate ... or to misunderstand another's statement.
If Jesus *could not* have submitted to the temptations by which he was tested, then they were not really temptations. If Jesus *had* submitted to any of the temptations by which he was tested, then either: 1) Jesus is simply not God, or 2) both: Jesus is God ... and the Godhead contains a contradiction. That is, Being Itself is contrary to Being Itself ... and thus there is no being at all.
=="Likewise, Jesus can be lied to, but cannot be deceived. Sin is falsehood enacted. Jesus can’t credit a falsehood, because he is omniscient. So nor can he act in any way contrary to the Truth that he perfectly knows."==
When the Second Person dwelt among us as the man Jesus, while he was indeed God, was he really omnipresent? Of course not; at any one time during those 33 years, Jesus the man was located at one single place, just as we are.
In similar vein, was the man Jesus, while being indeed God, really omniscient? I don't believe he was. Does not Scripture say that the Son laid aside the glory of his divinity, that he "emptied" himself, to take on flesh?
=="The thing I don’t quite get is how the Satan could be so stupid as to think he had a shot at turning the Lógos to his own side. I have read explanations to the effect that Lucifer thought Jesus was only the worldly Messiah expected by most contemporaneous Hebrews, and had no idea he was dealing with the Lógos. But that doesn’t quite cut it for me. Lucifer is a seraph, after all. Before he Fell, he could see the whole of cosmic history laid out before him like a tapestry. He had to have known the score.
...
The only way I have been able to find a way out of that thicket is to suppose that his Fall radically addled Lucifer’s wits, and darkened his mind, so that he could no longer remember seeing things the way he had before he Fell. He must be nuts, right?"==
I agree ... and I disagree. And, certainly, he is insane. But, he's not stupid.
As I understand it, the majority opinion among philosophers and theologians (I mean, the ones who admit that there is such a thing as 'good', and that is is knowable), going back the Aquinas and ultimately to Aristotle, is that "Evil is a privation of Good". From this presumption, they tend to reason that there is no being who loves evil purely for the sake of evil. I disagree with that conclusion: a mere look at current events, much less at history, shows us multitudes of human beings who give every indication of loving evil purely for the sake of evil. It seems to me to be a denial of their moral agency to tie oneself in philosophical knots "explaining" that, contrary to their own words, it's not that they love this or that evil, but that they misapprehend The Good.
By the reasoning which follows from "there is no being who loves evil purely for the sake of evil", the Satan is seen as being an atheist. One might call him a pre-Randian: Ayn Rand imagined that she had disposed of the necessity of the Necessary Being by positing that "Existence Exists!" On this view, the Satan has a similar outlook: he believes that "the cosmos", whether or not there is a physical extension to it, exists in its own right ... and, like the Darwinists, he believes that minds just "arise" all on their own out of not-mind.
To put it as a metaphor, the Satan believes that the three Persons of the Godhead occupy the Throne of Heaven not because they are God, but that they "arose" before he did and managed to cooperate and collectively occupy the Throne before he had the chance. That is, he imagines that the Throne bestows godhood, rather than that Godhead establishes the Throne.
In contrast, I believe that the Satan understands very well the facts of the matter ... and that he hates it.
I believe that the Satan is indeed a being who loves evil. Put another way, that he is a nihilist in the absolute sense of the word: that he *hates* "what is", he hates that anything at all exists; that the only purpose to which he puts his existence is to try to bring about the non-existence of "all that is". Or, as I said above, that he is insane.
=="The thing I don’t quite get is how the Satan could be so stupid as to think he had a shot at turning the Lógos to his own side."==
If we stop insisting that Jesus, the man, *had* to be omniscient, then most, if not all, of that difficulty vanishes. As I asked above, if we can acknowledge the plan fact that Jesus, the man, was not omnipresent, while still affirming that he is [indeed] the Second Person of the Trinity, why is it so difficult to let go the assertion that being the Son *requires* that the the Son of Man be omniscient?
So -- keeping in mind my view that the Satan is a nihilist -- I don't think it's so much that "Satan could be so stupid as to think he had a shot at turning the Lógos to his own side", but rather that he thought he could tempt Jesus, the man, into creating contradiction within the Godhead, and thereby bring about the non-existence of all things.
==The other thing that bugs me is that one of the things Lucifer would have had to see in cosmic history prior to his Fall was … his Fall. Was he doomed?==
What follows is purely hypothetical speculation --
1) What if physical incarnation as a human being is a "moral test", as it were, to which the angels must submit ... and that the "fallen angels" are those who refused the test? Consider that pre-Christian, and especially anti-Christian, religious movements tend to view the physical world with disgust. Perhaps the "fallen angels" were similarly disgusted by what embodiment entails, and refused to take the test
2) What if we human beings *are* the "fallen angels" (for whatever unstated reason it is that they rebelled against God) ... and that embodiment in the physical world and repentance through Christ Jesus is their/our hope of escaping ultimate death. Consider that God is a *jealous* God -- he does not easily or willingly give up what is his, and even the demons are his creatures. Is it really impossible that he loves them, even though they hate him?
If this second were the case, it's easy to see why God wouldn't tell us that: you just know that many millions of people, who might otherwise repent, might easily be swayed by the boast, "I shook my fist at God to has face, I'll keep shaking my fist at him."
