What is God like?
God is real and alive; He is infinite; we are finite beings. God has no beginning and no end; we have a beginning and an end. God is all-powerful, and he is all knowing. Though some of God’s nature and character is known and revealed, much of his nature is still a mystery. Though we cannot know everything there is to know about God, we can know some things about Him. God is a part of a trinity. The trinity is God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as three persons in one. The concept of the trinity is very complex. When we look at God, we must look at Christ and the Holy Spirit. We can find the nature of God and his being through the Bible, which is His inspired Word.
God’s nature is described using adjective, phrases, and nouns; however, we cannot completely describe all of God’s nature, we can describe some of it. In Romans 1:20 God is invisible, eternal, and divine. In Hebrews 6:17 says God is unchanging. God’s nature is a builder like in Hebrew 11:10; he is the Creator—he created the world in six days. God is honest, because he never lies, as it says in Hebrew 6:18. God is just, everlasting, great, the King, faithful, a refuge, fortress, hiding place, above all gods. God is holy, worthy of praise; the Lord is God, and full of compassion. God’s nature can be hidden and revealed; this belief is seen in Dialectical Theology under theologians like Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann.
In theology God’s nature is dialectal; his nature may seem contradictory, but it is true. Have you ever heard that God is a jealous God or about “His wrath”? God says in Exodus 20:5, “for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…” in context, however God means that He will punish those who hate Him. God is balanced. In 1 Corinthians 6:12 we are told, “everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.” God is one who is purposeful. It is a familiar saying around Christians that God does things for a reason. God’s paradoxical nature, in theology, says that he is both hidden and revealed; he is known in the past and the future hence the connection with receiving Christ into our hearts, reading the Word, and being in relationship with God.
How then is God’s nature revealed? God is known through Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit. Who is Jesus? In John 3:16, He is God’s only son, who died on the cross for our sins as a sign God’s love for us. The Holy Spirit is given to us, as believers, as our guide, so to speak, to teach and convict, and so on. The Bible and God’s words are “active and alive” as said in Hebrews 4:12. God’s word is sharper than any double-edged sword and it can penetrate through the soul and spirit right to the heart and judge the character of a person. Because God is all powerful and all knowing he can make himself known in multiple ways beyond our experience, his word, nature, and so on.
God’s nature is described using adjective, phrases, and nouns; however, we cannot completely describe all of God’s nature, we can describe some of it. In Romans 1:20 God is invisible, eternal, and divine. In Hebrews 6:17 says God is unchanging. God’s nature is a builder like in Hebrew 11:10; he is the Creator—he created the world in six days. God is honest, because he never lies, as it says in Hebrew 6:18. God is just, everlasting, great, the King, faithful, a refuge, fortress, hiding place, above all gods. God is holy, worthy of praise; the Lord is God, and full of compassion. God’s nature can be hidden and revealed; this belief is seen in Dialectical Theology under theologians like Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann.
In theology God’s nature is dialectal; his nature may seem contradictory, but it is true. Have you ever heard that God is a jealous God or about “His wrath”? God says in Exodus 20:5, “for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…” in context, however God means that He will punish those who hate Him. God is balanced. In 1 Corinthians 6:12 we are told, “everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.” God is one who is purposeful. It is a familiar saying around Christians that God does things for a reason. God’s paradoxical nature, in theology, says that he is both hidden and revealed; he is known in the past and the future hence the connection with receiving Christ into our hearts, reading the Word, and being in relationship with God.
How then is God’s nature revealed? God is known through Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit. Who is Jesus? In John 3:16, He is God’s only son, who died on the cross for our sins as a sign God’s love for us. The Holy Spirit is given to us, as believers, as our guide, so to speak, to teach and convict, and so on. The Bible and God’s words are “active and alive” as said in Hebrews 4:12. God’s word is sharper than any double-edged sword and it can penetrate through the soul and spirit right to the heart and judge the character of a person. Because God is all powerful and all knowing he can make himself known in multiple ways beyond our experience, his word, nature, and so on.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Can I Really Know Anything?
When I ask the question of whether we can really know anything, I dig deeper to ask if we can know everything. I then ask if it is possible to not know anything. I can know some things, but not everything. I know that God is infinite, and I am finite. I do exist: it is the “I think therefore I am” philosophy that makes Descartes popular. He would say because one doubts he or she exists.
Can I know everything? No, I cannot know everything. I can know some things. I know that either thing exist or they don’t. Do unicorns get mad? I know that unicorns do not get mad, because they are not real. How can I know the things I know? I believe that all knowledge begins with the fear of the Lord, like in Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.” To know God is to encounter Him, like Thomas Aquinas believes. To fear him and be in awe, love, and respect of Him is to be in relationship with Him.
The verse above shows that those who want knowledge, wisdom, and discipline are not fools. Fools are those who are morally deficient, as described in footnotes on www.biblegateway.com under Proverbs 1:7. The criteria for knowing and knowledge is one must seek the discipline and wisdom through God. No fool desires knowledge outside his or her own strength. When the righteous wants the truth he or she will use discipline and wisdom on the Lord’s understanding.
When one knows something it is vital to encounter God and to be in relationship with Him. We need to encounter discipline and wisdom. We can also know things in His Word. Some things are knowable that go against Rene Descartes’ law that material things are subject to physical law. We know miracles are not subject to physical law, because Jesus was a man, but he was God. Jesus healed the blind, the sick, and so on. A woman is in stage four of chemotherapy, the doctor diagnosed that she had a few days to live, but in her next check up there is no cancer detected. The physical law had not bound the miracle.
Knowledge is not always found or bound in physical laws. We can know things through God and with the senses given to us. We can sense, beyond out eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands and feet. We are creature with soul; we are creatures with depth and eternal need. Further, we can know beyond our senses: spiritually and mentally. We have desire for knowledge; we desire to know. We can know; we can know through our senses. It is important to know with the criteria of discipline and wisdom and the fear of the Lord. We cannot know everything; God knows everything. Though we may never know everything, He allows us to know some things.
Can I know everything? No, I cannot know everything. I can know some things. I know that either thing exist or they don’t. Do unicorns get mad? I know that unicorns do not get mad, because they are not real. How can I know the things I know? I believe that all knowledge begins with the fear of the Lord, like in Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.” To know God is to encounter Him, like Thomas Aquinas believes. To fear him and be in awe, love, and respect of Him is to be in relationship with Him.
The verse above shows that those who want knowledge, wisdom, and discipline are not fools. Fools are those who are morally deficient, as described in footnotes on www.biblegateway.com under Proverbs 1:7. The criteria for knowing and knowledge is one must seek the discipline and wisdom through God. No fool desires knowledge outside his or her own strength. When the righteous wants the truth he or she will use discipline and wisdom on the Lord’s understanding.
When one knows something it is vital to encounter God and to be in relationship with Him. We need to encounter discipline and wisdom. We can also know things in His Word. Some things are knowable that go against Rene Descartes’ law that material things are subject to physical law. We know miracles are not subject to physical law, because Jesus was a man, but he was God. Jesus healed the blind, the sick, and so on. A woman is in stage four of chemotherapy, the doctor diagnosed that she had a few days to live, but in her next check up there is no cancer detected. The physical law had not bound the miracle.
Knowledge is not always found or bound in physical laws. We can know things through God and with the senses given to us. We can sense, beyond out eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands and feet. We are creature with soul; we are creatures with depth and eternal need. Further, we can know beyond our senses: spiritually and mentally. We have desire for knowledge; we desire to know. We can know; we can know through our senses. It is important to know with the criteria of discipline and wisdom and the fear of the Lord. We cannot know everything; God knows everything. Though we may never know everything, He allows us to know some things.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Truth Values
In doing the in-class packet/midterm, I thought through a lot of the statements beyond just saying, “Oh yeah, it’s this or that…” but answering questions like “what truth values or assumptions are made?” I also can say that many people do not put enough reasoning and assumption for truth-value or a moral premise in the statements made daily. I like Aristotle’s laws of noncontradiction, law of identity, and law of the excluded middle because establish the truth and existence of things. It is important to establish the value of truth of a thing like a unicorn. Unicorns are not real; therefore they cannot be vicious like Hegel would declare.
If someone gives you a statement like “You shall not commit adultery.” It is either true or false with the implication that the nature of commit or adultery is something else. A moral premise is important for any statement. The second example is a command, like from a sergeant “I want you to search the houses: knock on the doors, search inside, go around the houses, and report back to me when you are done.” We have to know the moral premise of why a house is being searched maybe because there are enemies. The command has no truth in it until there is a moral premise; the sergeant wants to make sure there are no enemies that’s why he wants his officer to do as he said.
“You shall not commit adultery” because you must love and honor your wife/husband, you are violating God’s law, and ruining your relationship. When one looks at a statement, one must assume something about truth and revelation. I said that truth in all aspects should be objective: it is either true or false. Either you shall or shall not commit adultery; however, this statement says that we shall not it does not determine our actions. A man who is not pleased with his spouse may hire a call girl during a lonely business trip or a wife who is not pleased with her spouse may hire a male prostitute during a girls’ night out. To give value to a statement in philosophy there needs to be what Dr. Berger calls “underlying assumption.”
It is hard to be in conversation with a person that may have personal beliefs that differ largely from you (like Atheists versus Christians). I have engaged in conversation with people who raise the most ridiculous statements. Charles Colson in The Good Life, at a luncheon with his close friend and his friend’s personal bible study group members a guy pointed out that he does not like Christians because they are “know it alls” in a sense. I appreciate Colson’s response that Jesus was the one who said the claim of “No one comes through the Father except through me” (194). The guy he was speaking to was a postmodern who claimed that a pen was not falling (as he saw several times when Colson dropped a pen in front of him), but that the pen was “passing through particles.” It is interesting that Colson says that postmodernism has “abandoned reason in the process [they] left adherents with ‘both feet planted firmly in midair” (195).
Reason and assumption should be used to determine truth-values, without reason one will be firmly planting his or her feet in midair. Word Count (555)
If someone gives you a statement like “You shall not commit adultery.” It is either true or false with the implication that the nature of commit or adultery is something else. A moral premise is important for any statement. The second example is a command, like from a sergeant “I want you to search the houses: knock on the doors, search inside, go around the houses, and report back to me when you are done.” We have to know the moral premise of why a house is being searched maybe because there are enemies. The command has no truth in it until there is a moral premise; the sergeant wants to make sure there are no enemies that’s why he wants his officer to do as he said.
“You shall not commit adultery” because you must love and honor your wife/husband, you are violating God’s law, and ruining your relationship. When one looks at a statement, one must assume something about truth and revelation. I said that truth in all aspects should be objective: it is either true or false. Either you shall or shall not commit adultery; however, this statement says that we shall not it does not determine our actions. A man who is not pleased with his spouse may hire a call girl during a lonely business trip or a wife who is not pleased with her spouse may hire a male prostitute during a girls’ night out. To give value to a statement in philosophy there needs to be what Dr. Berger calls “underlying assumption.”
It is hard to be in conversation with a person that may have personal beliefs that differ largely from you (like Atheists versus Christians). I have engaged in conversation with people who raise the most ridiculous statements. Charles Colson in The Good Life, at a luncheon with his close friend and his friend’s personal bible study group members a guy pointed out that he does not like Christians because they are “know it alls” in a sense. I appreciate Colson’s response that Jesus was the one who said the claim of “No one comes through the Father except through me” (194). The guy he was speaking to was a postmodern who claimed that a pen was not falling (as he saw several times when Colson dropped a pen in front of him), but that the pen was “passing through particles.” It is interesting that Colson says that postmodernism has “abandoned reason in the process [they] left adherents with ‘both feet planted firmly in midair” (195).
Reason and assumption should be used to determine truth-values, without reason one will be firmly planting his or her feet in midair. Word Count (555)
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
How Can I Know Truth?
My knowledge on “knowing how I know” comes from Dr. Berger’s class and a reading I did of a short introductory article on epistemology via Internet called “Epistemology,” by F. Heylighen dated September 1993. He starts by saying “Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that studies knowledge.” He brings us to the next step by saying that this study asks how we can know something to be true, adequate knowledge and false, inadequate knowledge. He then says he basically takes into scientific methodology.
Through the article, he presents different points of views, from history: the Renaissance Era, and so on. I would like to point out a few qualities for knowing true, adequate knowledge from my interactions of class and listening to Dr. Berger coupled with the article. As Plato talks about objective knowledge, believing truth to be foundational and outside of us, then so do I.
Heylighen adds that contradictions arose against the idea of truth as absolute. Some later suggested truth to be relative, situational, or subjective. The knowledge of truth was even said to be static where knowledge is something that builds from something passive to active and adaptive. Adaptive truth is the daily interactions of life and the objects of this earth. I, for instance, could adapt truth of my existence and beliefs by the objects of the world.
After the Renaissance Era, came empiricism or rationalism. Empiricism sees knowledge as a result or product of your senses, for example, I can know a chair is real if I hit it and sit on it for I have used my sense. Rationalism is I can say well if this thing has four straight, even-length, wooden things standing like pillars under a four-side, flat shape, and I have sat on this thing. I can say for 21 years of my life I have seen this figure; I will call it a chair. With a name like “chair” I have reasoned to say I use this “chair” to sit on in class or in my room.
My current thoughts on the qualities of truth as absolute, universal, eternal, objective, knowable, authoritative and exclusive. My argument is truth is objective, eternal, and absolute. It is not relative, where it is true for me and not for you because it can translate truth as meaningless and worthless to try and discover. Truth is established outside of myself, outside of you, and outside of maybe Simpson University; it is be universal. Truth is not fluid; it is not situational. God is real that is a truth; he is not not real to me, because I am mad; if I am mad, he is still real; it does not matter what my situation or attitude is. What distorts the quality or value of truth is the intent and perception of an individual. Truth has to be the same year after year, person after person. My knowledge of God, for example, as a living God who faithful, loving, jealous, etc should not be totally gone if I die. Since the truth of God is outside of me He will remain known throughout the ages to many people at one time. He will be known universally and He is an absolute truth. Truth is a pursuit; it is real and existent. My thoughts may be infantile, but I can measure truth and how truth exists in the world.
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