Review of "The mystery and agency of God" (2014), by Frank G. Kirkpatrick

[FireDragon76]

As Christians we are not required to follow the Thomistic teaching of natural law. We know today that human nature has been moulded by the natural evolutionary process. According to a Platonic concept, rather than an Aristotelian, we can only participate in the divine, imitate its forms. But the divine does not live in us. We can only have a vague picture of the divine, and try to emulate it. Throughout the ages, people have done just this, and we can observe that humanity has bettered itself. We are much less warlike and violent than in primitive society (vide Gat, War in Human Civilization). This process changes human nature at the genetic level.

It is my understanding that participation implies indwelling. Unlike Zwingli and Calvin, I don't accept the axiom that the finite is incapable of the infinite.

David Andersen, “A Critique of John Calvin’s Philosophical Axiom ‘finitum non capax infiniti’” | Global Journal of Classic Theology

www.globaljournalct.com

I have some sympathy with this line of thinking; although, I'm open to other possibilities.

Consider this statement: God knows all possibilities, even those that never happen.
Why would God know what never happens? It seems God would know all actualities and would have no need to know things that never happen. Then again, if God creates a world where acrualities depend on human choices, it could be that God knows all possibilities, even those that never happen (pace Molinism).

Molinism is a clever alternative.

 

[public hermit]

It is my understanding that participation implies indwelling. Unlike Zwingli and Calvin, I don't accept the notion that the finite is incapable of the infinite.

David Andersen, “A Critique of John Calvin’s Philosophical Axiom ‘finitum non capax infiniti’” | Global Journal of Classic Theology

www.globaljournalct.com

Molinism is a clever alternative.

I'm not sure one can assume that Platonic participation can occur sans divine indwelling. Think of Socrates good "daimon" (spirit) that Socrates claimed he always listened to and who guided him. Moderns might want to reduce that guiding spirit to Socrates' conscience, but even that conscience that guides one toward goodness is a divine gift that guides one according to the transcendentals of goodness, beauty, and truth. That's a form of indwelling.

I agree, Molinism is a clever alternative. It leaves room for human choice without abrogating divine agency.

 

[Mark Quayle]

I have some sympathy with this line of thinking; although, I'm open to other possibilities.

Ha! Good one!

Consider this statement: God knows all possibilities, even those that never happen.
Why would God know what never happens? It seems God would know all actualities and would have no need to know things that never happen.

Agreed, the second and third sentences. What we consider "a possibility" may not properly be 'a thing'. So why would God know it, if it is not actual?

The first sentence? Not so much. Those "possibilities" that never happen may be only a fiction.

Then again, if God creates a world where acrualities depend on human choices, it could be that God knows all possibilities, even those that never happen (pace Molinism).

It's fun to speculate, but thoughts begin to turn on themselves. If it is possible to be true, the 'things' upon which we may speculate, —(Haha! One might say, "If it is possible that possibility is possible")— , then sure, run with it, multiple universes included. Why not? But we have no evidence of possibility. It may be only illusion that our choices are made from possible options. We only ever choose what we choose.

To go along with what you said about actualities depending on human choices: One poster says that God knows the future only because he sees it historically (not because he caused it) —with which assertion I disagree— but consider the following: God knows all things —all fact. If God knows anything only historically, it may be the thing about which we speculate —that it is only then properly 'a thing'; (God, of course, knowing from the foundation of the world, that we will speculate and what we will speculate.) But this does nothing, as far as I can tell, to demonstrate validity to the notion of "possibility".

I agree that part of the issue is that we only know from our perspective, and we can imagine other possibilities that would seem to fit what is actual, e.g. I could have worn a green sweater this morning instead of a gray one. That's just one way out of a myriad of ways things could have been different right now.

I have heard it said that "Whatever can happen will happen" is the original Murphy's law. (But what is usually meant by "Murphy's Law" —"Whatever can go wrong will go wrong"— is corollary to it).

My post, to which you answered, says that whatever could have happened is all that happened, and whatever happened is all that could have happened. I didn't extrapolate into the future, bringing the scientific habit of empirical investigation to bear. But it is just as fun, and just as simple a logic: We have only ever seen one thing happen —i.e. whatever did/does happen— so how can we say that anything except whatever WILL happen, CAN happen?

 

[FireDragon76]

Ha! Good one!

Agreed, the second and third sentences. What we consider "a possibility" may not properly be 'a thing'. So why would God know it, if it is not actual?

The first sentence? Not so much. Those "possibilities" that never happen may be only a fiction.

It's fun to speculate, but thoughts begin to turn on themselves. If it is possible to be true, the 'things' upon which we may speculate, —(Haha! One might say, "If it is possible that possibility is possible")— , then sure, run with it, multiple universes included. Why not? But we have no evidence of possibility. It may be only illusion that our choices are made from possible options. We only ever choose what we choose.

To go along with what you said about actualities depending on human choices: One poster says that God knows the future only because he sees it historically (not because he caused it) —with which assertion I disagree— but consider the following: God knows all things —all fact. If God knows anything only historically, it may be the thing about which we speculate —that it is only then properly 'a thing'; (God, of course, knowing from the foundation of the world, that we will speculate and what we will speculate.) But this does nothing, as far as I can tell, to demonstrate validity to the notion of "possibility".

I have heard it said that "Whatever can happen will happen" is the original Murphy's law. (But what is usually meant by "Murphy's Law" —"Whatever can go wrong will go wrong"— is corollary to it).

My post, to which you answered, says that whatever could have happened is all that happened, and whatever happened is all that could have happened. I didn't extrapolate into the future, bringing the scientific habit of empirical investigation to bear. But it is just as fun, and just as simple a logic: We have only ever seen one thing happen —i.e. whatever did/does happen— so how can we say that anything except whatever WILL happen, CAN happen?

Omniscience implies knowing everything possible, doesn't it?

 

[public hermit]

Omniscience implies knowing everything possible, doesn't it?

Yes, so long as there are things that are possible. But if I understand @Mark Quayle position accurately, then there is only one way the world can be, which is whatever happens in the actual world. If that's the case, then it can be argued that God does not know possibilities because there aren't any to know. The notion of possibility is due to our limitations. God would still be omniscient if there were no possibilities to be known, i.e., God would still know all there is to know.

ETA: I apologize for jumping in. I read your comment and started replying, forgetting you weren't asking me.

 

[FireDragon76]

Yes, so long as there are things that are possible. But if I understand @Mark Quayle position accurately, then there is only one way the world can be, which is whatever happens in the actual world. If that's the case, then it can be argued that God does not know possibilities because there aren't any to know. The notion of possibility is due to our limitations. God would still be omniscient if there were no possibilities to be known, i.e., God would still know all there is to know.

ETA: I apologize for jumping in. I read your comment and started replying, forgetting you weren't asking me.

So we would have knowledge of possibilities that God wouldn't? That doesn't sound so good.

 

[public hermit]

So we would have knowledge of possibilities that God wouldn't? That doesn't sound so good.

If that's the argument one wants to make, that would seem to be a conclusion. What are possibilities that never happen? They are mental constructs. What do we know when we imagine a possibility? There is a discursive element to imagining possibilities that I wonder whether it reflects divine "thinking," whatever that is. If I think of God in the Boethian sense of being "outside" time, then discursive thought that imagines possibilities and discards them seems out of place.

But I agree it seems strange we would consider possibilities that hadn't occurred to God. There is a sense in which it seems God knows all possibilities or we couldn't think of them. Does that mean God knows all impossibilities, too? I can think of logical impossibilities, e.g., a square circle. I suppose it would.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Omniscience implies knowing everything possible, doesn't it?

Of course! But who's to say what is possible? If your statement intended that God knows all things, then, Amen and Amen! But if you mean by that to assume that everything we might conjecture as a possibility IS a possibility, then no, God doesn't know all those things, because they are not all possible. Thus, the "not so much".

 

[Mark Quayle]

Yes, so long as there are things that are possible. But if I understand @Mark Quayle position accurately, then there is only one way the world can be, which is whatever happens in the actual world. If that's the case, then it can be argued that God does not know possibilities because there aren't any to know. The notion of possibility is due to our limitations. God would still be omniscient if there were no possibilities to be known, i.e., God would still know all there is to know.

ETA: I apologize for jumping in. I read your comment and started replying, forgetting you weren't asking me.

Well, I, at least, appreciate you jumping in. By definition, the range of possibility must also include what is actual, so I allow it. But yeah, the inclusion of what is not actual has to keep being pruned out of the conversation, it seems.

 

[FireDragon76]

Of course! But who's to say what is possible? If your statement intended that God knows all things, then, Amen and Amen! But if you mean by that to assume that everything we might conjecture as a possibility IS a possibility, then no, God doesn't know all those things, because they are not all possible. Thus, the "not so much".

Everything that is a possibility, is a possibility. That's A=A, using Aristotle's logic. But then you seem to be saying that A is not A. I don't think you are being very clear, here.

 

[Teofrastus]

Frank Tupper (A scandalous providence, 1995) rejects the mainstream view, that every event somehow falls within the will of God. It runs contrary to the Lord's Prayer, "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." God's will is done is heaven; but it is most often not done on earth. And why does Jesus pray, "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me"? If God is always in full control of worldly events, the prayer doesn't make sense. However, Luther would have argued that God had ordained that Jesus be crucified. But this means that he must also argue that God had ordained the Holocaust. So it doesn't make sense, after all. God is not behind everything that happens.

 

[FireDragon76]

Frank Tupper (A scandalous providence, 1995) rejects the mainstream view, that every event somehow falls within the will of God. It runs contrary to the Lord's Prayer, "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." God's will is done is heaven; but it is most often not done on earth. And why does Jesus pray, "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me"? If God is always in full control of worldly events, the prayer doesn't make sense. However, Luther would have argued that God had ordained that Jesus be crucified. But this means that he must also argue that God had ordained the Holocaust. So it doesn't make sense, after all. God is not behind everything that happens.

Traditionally, Reformed Protestants recognize different senses that the "will of God" is used. Sometimes things that happen are said to be part of his "permissive will" only. This is hardly different from Catholics saying that God merely permits things to happen, however, unless you want to imply that God can speak things into existence that are logically impossible (?). It seems to me the issue is the high amount of stress that is placed on the notion of divine sovereignty, and how it is constructed as being in opposition to freedom, at times.

Luther interprets the Lord's Prayer as a petition for a subjective apprehension of God's will for us.

I think you could always argue that God is behind everything that happens because there is something rather than nothing.

 

[FireDragon76]

If that's the argument one wants to make, that would seem to be a conclusion. What are possibilities that never happen? They are mental constructs. What do we know when we imagine a possibility? There is a discursive element to imagining possibilities that I wonder whether it reflects divine "thinking," whatever that is. If I think of God in the Boethian sense of being "outside" time, then discursive thought that imagines possibilities and discards them seems out of place.

But I agree it seems strange we would consider possibilities that hadn't occurred to God. There is a sense in which it seems God knows all possibilities or we couldn't think of them. Does that mean God knows all impossibilities, too? I can think of logical impossibilities, e.g., a square circle. I suppose it would.

Yes, I do believe imagination is a kind of divine milieu. It was an essential part of me returning to considering Christianity, honestly, as a viable spiritual path.

I'm very concerned about any theology that would imply a separation of our subjectivity and imagination from God, TBH. Just consider, for instance, that C.S. Lewis was influenced by Owen Barfield, who was a subjective idealist and considered human imagination to be at least analogous to the divine. That subjective idealism was essential in the conversion of C.S. Lewis, and I don't think many American Evangelicals appreciate that. Lewis wasn't at all persuaded by Protestant Biblicism or Scholasticism (he rejected inerrancy, seemed to have a low view of inspiration, and had a more participatory, synergistic view of salvation, similar to Eastern Orthodoxy).

 

[public hermit]

Yes, I do believe imagination is a kind of divine milieu. It was an essential part of me returning to considering Christianity, honestly, as a viable spiritual path.

I'm very concerned about any theology that would imply a separation of our subjectivity and imagination from God, TBH. Just consider, for instance, that C.S. Lewis was influenced by Owen Barfield, who was a subjective idealist and considered human imagination to be at least analogous to the divine. That subjective idealism was essential in the conversion of C.S. Lewis, and I don't think many American Evangelicals appreciate that. Lewis wasn't at all persuaded by Protestant Biblicism or Scholasticism (he rejected inerrancy, seemed to have a low view of inspiration, and had a more participatory, synergistic view of salvation, similar to Eastern Orthodoxy).

For myself, I take any speculation about divine subjective experience with a significant grain of salt. Even if our experience of imagination is analogous to the divine subjective experience, I'm going to assume there are probably ways in which the analogy breaks down. I don't see that as discarding the value of human imagination. To the contrary, I consider our ability to imagine a divine gift of great value when used appropriately. But for myself, my most intimate experience of the divine does not happen on the level of imagination, in fact imagination can get in the way, but on a level where my subjective awareness is somehow in touch with the divine awareness. The moment I try to insert a form or image into that experience as a way of trying to understand it or make sense of it, I know that particular imagination stands between that mutual awareness, not enabling it but hampering it. So I'm somewhat reticent to put too much stock in our cognitive functions as a way for understanding divine knowing, strictly speaking. Going back to Wittgenstein, this is one of those areas where I think we ultimately cannot speak; although, I'm more than happy to kick the speculative ball around just to remind myself how much I don't know.

 

[FireDragon76]

For myself, I take any speculation about divine subjective experience with a significant grain of salt. Even if our experience of imagination is analogous to the divine subjective experience, I'm going to assume there are probably ways in which the analogy breaks down. I don't see that as discarding the value of human imagination. To the contrary, I consider our ability to imagine a divine gift of great value when used appropriately. But for myself, my most intimate experience of the divine does not happen on the level of imagination, in fact imagination can get in the way, but on a level where my subjective awareness is somehow in touch with the divine awareness. The moment I try to insert a form or image into that experience as a way of trying to understand it or make sense of it, I know that particular imagination stands between that mutual awareness, not enabling it but hampering it. So I'm somewhat reticent to put too much stock in our cognitive functions as a way for understanding divine knowing, strictly speaking. Going back to Wittgenstein, this is one of those areas where I think we ultimately cannot speak; although, I'm more than happy to kick the speculative ball around just to remind myself how much I don't know.

Both the kataphatic and apophatic approaches are important, but for very different reasons.

 

[FireDragon76]

For myself, I take any speculation about divine subjective experience with a significant grain of salt. Even if our experience of imagination is analogous to the divine subjective experience, I'm going to assume there are probably ways in which the analogy breaks down. I don't see that as discarding the value of human imagination. To the contrary, I consider our ability to imagine a divine gift of great value when used appropriately. But for myself, my most intimate experience of the divine does not happen on the level of imagination, in fact imagination can get in the way, but on a level where my subjective awareness is somehow in touch with the divine awareness. The moment I try to insert a form or image into that experience as a way of trying to understand it or make sense of it, I know that particular imagination stands between that mutual awareness, not enabling it but hampering it. So I'm somewhat reticent to put too much stock in our cognitive functions as a way for understanding divine knowing, strictly speaking. Going back to Wittgenstein, this is one of those areas where I think we ultimately cannot speak; although, I'm more than happy to kick the speculative ball around just to remind myself how much I don't know.

The problem as I see it, western Christianity has never been able to put mysticism within a larger context in a way that can integrate it into the larger catholic tradition. The western mind privileges the practical mind, to a fault. For the past centuries, great artists and people that live the human experience with a deep sense of interiority have tended to not be Christians in the western world. And that actually impoverishes the Church (Van Gogh comes to mind as an obvious example).

I think the problem with a purely apophatic path can be seen in Quaker religion. It not only privileges that apophatic, but it does so in such an extreme way it's difficult to sustain a community within its structures. Quakers are a fraction of what their movement used to be, at one time. It's one thing to be a lamp, salt, or light, but in order for those things to be of any use to the world, there has to be a way to mediate that experience in ways that the "non-enlightened", those without mystical vision, can understand and benefit from. Quaker religion can therefore result in its own kind of nominalism, which tends to be a kind of disengaged moralism (Bishop Robert Baron told a story once of one Quaker convert to Catholicism he knew, who said his former church's testimony was too much like the New York Times editorial page).

 

[Mark Quayle]

Everything that is a possibility, is a possibility. That's A=A, using Aristotle's logic. But then you seem to be saying that A is not A. I don't think you are being very clear, here.

'Possibility' takes (at least) two meanings, or maybe I should say, two uses— what is actually possible, and what we think is possible.

Looking back through history we find out what was actually possible. My little dialogue would say that nothing that doesn't happen can possibly happen —so why say of history that other things (besides what actually happened) were possible to happen?

Looking to the future, then, why say that anything (besides what will actually happen) is a possibility? It only means we don't know. And I include in that 'future' terminology, all our speculation on mere unknown fact. WE say that this or that could be true, but by that we only mean that we don't know which is true.

The fact we don't know what is fact does not imply that more than one thing can be fact.

 

[public hermit]

The problem as I see it, western Christianity has never been able to put mysticism within a larger context in a way that can integrate it into the larger catholic tradition. The western mind privileges the practical mind, to a fault. For the past centuries, great artists and people that live the human experience with a deep sense of interiority have tended to not be Christians in the western world. And that actually impoverishes the Church (Van Gogh comes to mind as an obvious example).

I think the problem with a purely apophatic path can be seen in Quaker religion. It not only privileges that apophatic, but it does so in such an extreme way it's difficult to sustain a community within its structures. Quakers are a fraction of what their movement used to be, at one time. It's one thing to be a lamp, salt, or light, but in order for those things to be of any use to the world, there has to be a way to mediate that experience in ways that the "non-enlightened", those without mystical vision, can understand and benefit from. Quaker religion can therefore result in its own kind of nominalism, which tends to be a kind of disengaged moralism (Bishop Robert Baron told a story once of one Quaker convert to Catholicism he knew, who said his former church's testimony was too much like the New York Times editorial page).

I don't disagree. I sincerely doubt a purely apophatic approach is possible. Something must be negated for an apophatic approach, but that negation is not an absolute negation so much as a transcendence of what is negated. As Dionysius states in The Mystical Theology, "Now we should not conclude that the negations are simply the opposites of the affirmations, but rather that the cause of all is considerably prior to this, beyond privation, beyond every denial, beyond every assertion" (1000B). We might say God is neither being nor non-being but super-being, so long as we understand that assertion, whatever it is saying, transcends both the affirmation as well as the denial of being.

Even when I speak of my experience as an awareness of the divine awareness, I am relying on a context and conceptual framework to try and communicate that experience.

I don't know a thing about Quackers so I'll accept your word on it. I haven't found an acceptance of an apophatic approach, or at least the willingness to accept human cognitive limitations, to have that result in all cases. I immediately think of Maximus the Confessor's The Church's Mystagogy or John Ruusbroac's A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness where the kataphatic and apophatic are blended quite nicely and work together. But I am certain an inordinate emphasis on the apophatic to an extreme would be counter-productive.

 

[FireDragon76]

'Possibility' takes (at least) two meanings, or maybe I should say, two uses— what is actually possible, and what we think is possible.

"Actually possible" is an oxymoron. Once something is actual, it isn't a possibility anymore.

 

[Mark Quayle]

"Actually possible" is an oxymoron. Once something is actual, it isn't a possibility anymore.

So what is possible can never be actual? How about "can what was possible never be actual"? It is not an oxymoron, though, I'm glad at least that you see the point —that one use of "possibility" attributes substance to what is only fiction.