Biblical Metaphysics: more free writing notes.
Biblical Metaphysics
It is indeed a strange reality that the best contemporary definition of biblical metaphysics comes from the political guru Rush Limbaugh: “Words mean things.” The next sentence threatens to steal the fire from all debates on Calvinism with crass simplicity: Words in heaven mean the same thing as they do on earth.
According to Matthew 4:4, Christ said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Christ either said that or he didn’t, and Moses is now central in this discussion once again. Remember our discussion of him in chapter three? He told Israel to not ask who would bring the word down to earth from heaven; there is no such need, the word is near, and in us. Nor is it too difficult for us.
Most of religious history is like political media. We listen to a political speech on TV, and then a commentator or “political expert” tells us what they said. The serpent came to Eve like a political commentator; he also came to Christ in the wilderness the same way. The great unwashed masses need to be told what God said to us by elite mortals. When Christ came, He turned that construct completely upside down. Christ was God in the flesh speaking directly to the people. In regard to the Sermon on the Mount, Scripture states that Christ “taught” them (Matthew 5:2). When you are “taught,” it assumes you have learned something. The crowd learned something that day directly from God, and without an expert commentator to interpret it for them. Not only that, these were the commoners of that day. The commoners were obviously Christ’s target ministry.
Christ not only spoke with authority,* but He rebutted the “experts” of that day through a series of, “You have heard that it was said, but I say to you that….” The Sermon on the Mount is also prefaced with a hermeneutic: it begins with the statement that the people were taught, and ends with a promise of a life built upon a rock if one “hears” the words and “does them.” Just like Moses said: the words are near, and we are able to do them. Christ goes out of His way to emphasize the hearing and doing hermeneutic by presenting a parable-in-contrast:
Matthew 7:24 – “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
Like most eras in religious history, the Jewish culture during the time of Christ was saturated with religious experts who used caste to oppress the people. Christ never checked in with the religious academia of that day, He virtually ignored them and took the gospel of the kingdom directly to the common people. They had not been taught they were merely controlled:
Matthew 9:35 – And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
The religious hierarchy often confronted Christ accordingly in regard to His “authority”:
Matthew 21:23 – And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”
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*In other words, He spoke on His own authority and not the religious experts of the day. The fact that He did so “astonished” the crowds (Matthew 7:28, 29).
24 Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. 25 The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?” And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” 27 So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.
John the Baptist was hardly part of the formal academia of that day. Yet, his authority came directly from heaven. The religious elite of that day were expected to “believe him” because of the truth he spoke. Truth is the authority. Even though that culture was functioning on the authority of men, it is interesting that the religious leaders dared not to admit it and accuse John the Baptist of such.
Power Over the Laity
This book will stay clear of an in-depth evaluation of the Gnostics because they were philosophical decedents of Plato, and a rudimentary knowledge of Platonism is all that is necessary to understand Calvinism. Gnosticism had infiltrated Judaism and saturated the culture of that time and place. The apostolic pushback against their Platonist dualism can be seen throughout the New Testament. But most interesting is the fact that the sect known as the Nicolaitans were the embodiment of first century Gnosticism, and the name “is derived from the Greek word nikolaos, a compound of the words nikos and laos. The word nikos is the Greek word that means to conquer or to subdue. The word laos is the Greek word for the people. It is also where we get the word laity. When these two words are compounded into one, they form the name Nicolas, which literally means one who conquers and subdues the people. It seems to suggest that the Nicolaitans were somehow conquering and subduing the people.”[50]
Not only did Christ mention the Nicolaitans as recorded in Revelation 2:6, but He had a discourse with a Jewish leader, actually, “the” teacher of Israel, denoting very high status, named Nicodemus. This is also a name that means, “victory over the people.”* The conversation is recorded in John 3:1-21, and is the only recorded event where Christ used the new birth in a presentation of the gospel. This is significant.
But we can go back earlier in history to see the Greek/Jewish combination of philosophy and religion with Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE – 50 CE). Philo was a Hellenistic Jewish (Neo-Platonist) who fused Greek philosophy with Judaism. Philo read the Bible as allegorical, for it was through allegorical interpretation you would gain the true knowledge. This is the case with the later development of Kabbalah that the symbolic and not the literal meaning of the bible is where the real meaning is found.[51]
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*From the Greek name Νικοδημος (Nikodemos) which meant “victory of the people” from Greek νικη (nike) “victory” and δημος (demos) “the people”.
The Jewish leaders during the time of Christ were heavily influenced by Platonism, and their government of faith and force had the authority to enforce all Jewish laws on the populous except capital punishment.[52] It was very similar to Plato’s political construct; i.e., the religious edicts and civil laws of the leaders were enforced by the Temple Guard. But the main point I want to make here is the reoccurring theme of the word being close. Once again, we see Moses being brought to bear, this time, in the conversation between Christ and Nicodemus:
John 3:13 – No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
Christ was refuting elitist orthodoxy. Nicodemus and the other religious leaders of that day were not mediators between God and the commoners. They did not bring down the word to earth. The word is already near, and in us, through the new birth. All must be born again form above. Truth and salvation doesn’t originate in the flesh of men, it comes down from above. This is the melding of heaven and earth. This is the melding of spirit and material. In essence, this serves as a refutation of Plato’s metaphysical dichotomy of the material and invisible.
Nicodemus was not even familiar with this basic spiritual truth of the new birth though he was “the” teacher in Israel. Salvation comes directly to those who believe in Christ, not through elitist orthodoxy. The following confused Nicodemus: the power Christ was able to display apart from the blessings and authority of the religious leadership:
John 3:2 – This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Christ cut right to the point—salvation is imparted directly to the believer and Christ is the only mediator. This turned Nicodemus’ religious hierarchy completely upside down. This is a major point of contention throughout the New Testament:
1John – 2:26 I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. 27 But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.
We have no need for anyone to teach us—we should rather “abide in him,” not some spiritual elitist ruler. There are those gifted to encourage and equip us in abiding, but they are not mediators.
Words
The Bible is God’s full-orbed philosophical statement to every individual. The first two chapters are His metaphysics, epistemology, and ethic. But for our purposes concerning the point at hand, we want to focus on God’s epistemology of words. Our world and reality is interpreted grammatically. God spoke the world into existence with words, but the power of His words is not the only consideration, we must also consider the fact that words enable us to interpret reality. Word identification makes what is relevant. Even UFO’s are significant because they are explained as unidentified, and they fly. Light is light because God identified it with the word, “light.” This gives light meaning, and its meaning becomes reality in the words, “bright,” “warm,” etc. Certainly things can exist without words, but they have no relevance. What was it, before God “separated” light and darkness as recorded in Genesis 1:4? We don’t know, it wasn’t named with a word. But light and darkness as one would be interesting to see and experience. But would there be words to give that phenomenon relevance? I suppose so; it would simply be a “phenomenon.”
God created words to communicate with mankind, and they mean things, and they mean what God says they mean. This is extremely relevant to our conversation for the Reformers claimed, and still claim to be the masters of words. And be sure of this: those who interpret words interpret realty. As we will see in chapter five, Martin Luther hijacked God’s epistemology with his theology of the cross. Calvinism is not a doctrine of any sort, it is a philosophy that posits a Reformed interpretation of reality itself. The question before us in not whether or not we believe in election; at stake is the very interpretation of reality itself.
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
Reblogged this on Clearcreek Chapel Watch.
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Paul,
With respect, light and darkness cannot be “one” as they are mutually exclusive concepts. The problem is that language is not causal…it is purely abstract. It is not language which separates, it is observation. Observation, in other words, causes. Language is how the “parts” of what is observed are organized into a conceptual system designed to promote a primary standard of TRUTH (a primary concept which is the FIRST prerequisite of observation…the existence of a SELF) which can only be, of course, the observer.
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Argo,
You just redefined the word “separated” (In the sentence, “separate” doesn’t really mean separate because…). And I dare say your position robs God of all mystery. Light and darkness can be one if God states that it was. Words mean things, and if light and darkness were separated, they were once one. Words are not causal, but they define reality. Separate, and the action is defined by the word. Definitions are concrete, and words define. You can argue about definitions, but they either convey truth or they don’t.
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“You can argue about definitions, but they either convey the truth or they don’t”.
I think this is a contradiction in terms. If the definitions are arguable, then truth isn’t really found in the definition. The definition is an abstraction of an abstraction (for language is abstract), which is subject to observer contextual interpretation. Like, to a visually impaired person, the light may be dim, and not light at all…does this make them a liar? Of course not, because they are not lying. To them, what you see as light is simply not light, according to the accepted definition…but this doesn’t make the blind person a liar, nor does it make what they experience un-truth. It doesn’t even re-define the concept of “light”. It just makes the TRUTH of that concept subject to the observer, which it always and inexorably is, no matter how you might try to argue otherwise. This makes truth a function of the material object being observed according to the contextual reality of the observer…because THAT, the combination of those two things, not the definition in a vacuum, is actual.
Your position does demand that words cause things, not define things….in the case of the visually impaired person above, you would subjugate their physical observation with your own abstract definition of “light”, and call them liars for not conceding your particular definition of what THEY are observing. You would, in effect, put TRUTH in the hands of purely abstract concepts (that you and you alone get to value for everyone else) and castigate humanity for daring to observe something differently. And that is a thread I see in your philosophy, and you do this by making the Bible the new Primary Consciousness in your fight against Calvinism. You don’t really mean “words mean things”. You mean “the bible is to be interpreted like this, and this alone.” Paul, you lose the fight with the Calvinists because you still have the same philosophy. You just approach it with a different hermeneutic. But you still make the standard of truth not the human being, or even God, but what you decide the “words mean” thinking that words can exist in a vacuum, distinct from the observer who gives those words their value.
What is “light” removed from the object which has been given the label? What is darkness removed from that object which has been given the label? There is no such definition. There is only the concept of “light” in a vacuum and “darkness” in a vacuum. That must mean that whatever existed as a “combination” was not, in fact “light being darkness at the same time, and vice versa”, but was something else. Which you conceded when you gave it a new conceptual label: phenomenon.
Forgive me, but you are confusing material reality with the linguistic tools we use to organize it. You are conceding that truth is a function of what cannot be observed: words. This is not hallowing the “mysteries of God”. This is Platonism.
And since the “mysteries” of God are by definition unknowable to man, I submit it is impossible for you to explain just what mysteries I have supposedly robbed God of. So I’ll let that one go.
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Argo,
God created light and said, “That’s light.” Physical deficiency does’t change the reality of the light, or its definition. Words are concrete reality that define reality. Different uses of words may have a different epistemological reality in say, different countries, but the variances point to the same reality. A blind man that cannot see words can feel them, and reality can be defined by him though not experienced to the point that others can experience it. Perception doesn’t change reality. Braille is different than seeing, and spoken definitions vary, but that does’t change what a cow is.
I know what Platonism is. It dichotomizes reality from definition. The subjective definitions of the philosopher kings are dictated to the masses. And that’s Calvinism as well. Multiple synonyms are created from one definition and made into antonyms according to the caste construct that came from Hinduism. That’s Platonism. Hence, you can make reality whatever you want it to be and then dictate it to the masses. Words mean things.
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Paul,
Words mean things. Okay my friend, granted. But what are the things? I am arguing that words mean the objects they are describing…that is, they are valued by the object, and thus are utterly distinct. But what you are doing is saying that the word itself is the exact same thing as the object being the observed. You do not make a distinction, and that is problematic because a “word” is an abstract concept which is broken down into linguistic definitions which are also abstract concepts. The only thing not abstract is a. the observer, and b. the object observed.
When you say God created light, what is it exactly you are saying He created? The concept of “light” or did he look at an object, say, the sun for sake of argument, and essentially declare that “that thing is a light thing”? If you say that light, in a conceptual vacuum, is an actual object, then you have conceded Platonism, because a concept such as “light” cannot be directly observed by any of the five senses. Only a THING which is light can be observed by the senses. Thus, in your argument “truth” becomes external to man. An object is a light or dark object…it cannot be lightness or darkness the concepts itself; which is why no thing can be both light and dark at the same time; it is a contradiction in terms. The object is what it is, and we use words to give a contextual (and abstract) value to it.
And the contextual value is according to what? To the person doing the observing. A fire is light to you, but dark to a visually impaired person. This does not change the definition of the word, as you might suggest, but it merely makes TRUTH a function of the observation of the human being. Which it is. It is correct and utterly true to say that “the fire is dark” for a person who is visually impaired. It is consistent with the definition of the words “light” and “dark”, but the value of the word is changed, or a new concept substituted based on the context of the individual. Instead of a visually impaired person, you could think of a person who is far away from the object which is light, versus someone close to it. The value of “light” will change depending on the observer. The point is not sensory deprivation, but the contextual reality of the self-aware agent: the human.
God creates that which can be defined by man as “light” or “dark”. If we say he creates the abstractions so that they become a material “thing”, then we are Platonists, because we put observable reality beyond the senses of man.
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Argo,
You can’t win this argument unless you show proof that Christ didn’t state Matthew 4:4. If He said it, you have to agree with me. The best you can do is call it a draw by saying you don’t know for certain that he said it. If He said it according to your construct, the metaphysics and epistemology always produce a life-giving ethic and politic, though the outcomes vary in essence.
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Argo-you said,
“What does Christ mean by “live” in Matthew 4:4: Does He really mean man lives by ingesting conceptual abstractions?” Yes, that’s what food is. You live by it, and it is real, and you eat it. That is the specific point Christ is making.
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Paul, living by the “words” of God is an analogy. What does it mean to live? It means to a knowledge one’s life as the source of truth (value and morality). And the words of God affirm this. The words of God can only affirm the reality of human life as the source of truth. There is no other reasonable hermeneutic. The devil is trying to make the Bible a primary consciousness: do THIS because it’s in the bible, and thus the abstractions are the “truth” you must sacrifice yourself for. Jesus is saying no, Satan, you have the interpretation wrong. Man LIVES by God’s words. He does not die (e.g. cast himself off a cliff) in service to them. That is not truth; that is more of Satan’s Platonism.
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Argo,
Words define life and choices. Obviously, bad choices can lead to death. The very way people think can kill them.
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Boy Argo if I went by your construct of thinking everything in its existence would then just be relative-
“I think, therefore I am”.
You can take many words today that actually had meaning (like tolerance) and are now changed to something completely different, BUT that does not mean that the word did not have its original intent. It just means that someone manipulated it to come up with a new meaning. Communists did this all the time- just read about the Cultural Revolution and what they did to change the meaning of family, teacher, etc..
That is why going back to the original Greek and Hebrew is important because yes these words had meaning and stuck by that meaning according to the Jews and early Christians.
I am with you Paul on this one. Plus, it is a little hard for me to follow you Argo with all these big terminologies but I get the gist of what talking about (I hope)- if I am not, please enlighten mean in simple terms.
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“I meant please enlighten me in simple terms.”
also we might as well not be posting if “we are not really meaning what we are really saying”.
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Well Argo you are a very intellectual personality just as God made you, so I take what you say into consideration of that. My grandfather would have spoken like you- 🙂
I get the gist of what you have to say, but would you not say words such as light, dimness, bright, etc. still fit within the same construct? As in an English class we would call this synonym meaning the same or close to it; so is this not what we have to consider also when we read Scripture. I mean I do understand that when reading a book one is going to take it differently then another, but still the author is the one who knows what he or she writes about completely. That also goes for the Bible as well– This is where I take it when I read Scripture. Where I see it plainly I take it for what it is. Where I don’t – here is the kicker; I do rely on the Holy Spirit to teach me. And before you state that man has it within himself to acknowledge these things himself, I would disagree. I only state that because of experience with the Holy Spirit changing something in my heart that I could not do on my own, even though I knew what Scripture said what to do. That sin was with anger- I kept doing it, kept praying about it, and tried even to change it. One day the Holy Spirit relayed to my heart that the burden of anger would be gone- I had one more outburst of my temper (which cost me by the way) and then the burden was gone. (I do still get angry from time to time but I am not enslaved to it any longer).
I do trust in words, and like Rush Limbaugh stated they do mean things; I believe it is man who distorts and changes its meaning for his own purposes, not that words are naturally interchangeable.
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…and the Holy Spirit leads you to “all TRUTH.” Even that is not a “private” interpretation. Only TRUTH sanctifies: JN 17:17.
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Trust 4 him only…
It is a common misconception that if something OUTSIDE man doesn’t define reality then man necessarily descends into subjectivism. Or said another way: if authority doesn’t declare reality man is doomed to subjectivity.
Unfortunately there are no simple terms when addressing the nature of Man’s epistemology and why the Primacy of Consciousness (Authority as the definition of reality) has been such a disastrous philosophical conclusion. This specific philosophical fight has a long history and requires understanding the axioms of consciousness, existence, and identity. And then it requires understanding the progression through concept formation, which includes Aristotle’s laws of identity, the problem of Universals, and the nature of entities and particulars. So asking Argo to boil this down into bit sized chunks is an exceedingly tall order if all you are interested in is the fortune cookie version of human cognition and its context to reality.
I will offer a couple thoughts to help understand the bigger picture.
(Argo I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, if my summary is wrong you can amend)
What Argo refers to as an “abstraction” is him defining the dog-ness, the house-ness, the table-ness of a given concept. What is the –ness that comprise the particulars of say a table. By definition man does not remember every table he has encountered as if they were wholly unique events. Man does not approach reality like a baby who can’t distinguish mommy under a blanket vs mommy saying peekaboo in front of her face. Man must have a means to generalize the particulars of a given entity. And that entity is defined by its –ness. We remember trees because we learn to abstract the tree-ness from our perceptions of reality. So when Argo says “abstraction” he means to identify the highest concept of any given –ness of a specific idea. (Most specifically now man defines TRUTH-ness)
Now the next step: He then says that abstractions that get used to define TRUTH-ness outside of man has no specific meaning to man’s existence. An abstraction does not have a specific identity, and without an identity it is in fact beyond the scope of human existence. The moment an abstraction takes on the power to impose its infinite “nature” on human existence it destroys men in particular.
Let me try to make this point with an example.
Zeno , an ancient philosopher said that it was impossible to cross a room. Here was his logic. If you cross a room you must first cross half, then you must cross half of that distance, and then you must cross half of that distance, and since there are an INFINITE number of halves man is doomed to never be able to move at all.
Zeno’s paradox stumped people for hundreds of years. Until they realized the specific distinction between the abstraction called infinity and the identity of a rooms actual measurements. Infinity is not a particular, because it is not a unit of measure. It is a conceptual abstraction used to mean timeless/measureless therefore it is not an identity. But you can cross a room of fifteen feet because feet (no matter how many there are) can be traversed because feet have a human coefficient in reality. Fifteen feet is the IDENTITY of the room’s measurements.
Now notice that if anyone tried to actually live by Zeno’s paradox that man would certainly die, because he could never take action. Indeed his tongue couldn’t even travel in his mouth because it would always have to cross half of the space. And in this way the abstraction destroys man.
So now back to Argo. Argo is expanding the answer to the Zeno paradox to EVERY abstraction held up as the definer of human existence. He is say directly that abstraction CANNOT be the metaphysical primary for man’s epistemological life. Abstractions are by definition secondary to the creator of the abstraction Man. Therefore man the SELF, is the plumb line of truth.
And I will add this last: When Argo speaks of the Self, he is subsuming Individual identity and cognitive function into one abstraction. This is his shorthand for identifying the individuals specific function within reality.
Anyway… that is enough for now. The advanced seminar on epistemology will take a short break.
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