I would gratefully appreciate it if people who did not participate in the first three threads not participate in this one. You may feel free to read the threads (linked above) in order to “catch up”, and then join the discussion. But if you know nothing about the way we have defined our terms, then you really cannot contribute anything useful to this thread.
Before we begin examining the epistemology of Jesus as accounted by John the Beloved, let’s review some of the important terms that we’ve defined so far. It is still the case that the purpose of all discussion is to understand my philosophy of Jesus. The debate will not take place until the next thread, Part V. And in that thread, I will request that no one who has not read all four prior threads in their entirety participate in the debate.
Here is an abridged review, for those interested:
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Aesthetics: the evaluation of worth or value
Morality: internalized views of right and wrong, often correlated with a god or conscience
Ethics: external views of what is acceptable and unacceptable, often comprising the cumulative opinions of general society
Epistemology: the study of knowledge and its source
Metaphysics: the study of the nature of reality
Ontology: the study of the nature of existence
Existence: the state of all emerged essences
Essence: “the what it was to be” — Aristotle; i.e., the nature that identifies a thing before it comes into existence
Eternity: a timeless state
Necessity: a metaphysical certitude
Reality: that which is essential, eternal, and necessary
Free Moral Agent: an agent whose aesthetical decisions are uncoerced
Goodness: edification of one free moral agent by another, who also becomes edified
Love: the means by which goodness is conveyed
Evil: aesthetic emptiness
Sin: the obstruction of love
Freewill: the ability of free moral agents to make aesthetic decisions freely and voilitionally
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The first and most important knowledge that we get from John the Beloved is that Jesus is God:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
[…snip…]
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.The above is from the first Chapter of John, verses 1 through 14.
You may follow this discussion by opening a tab to The Book of John, although references will be made to John’s other books, and a few references will be made to other books. All references will be cited.
It is therefore to be understood first and foremost that I define Jesus (partly) as God made flesh. That means I’m introducing a new term: God. I define God as love. (Actually, I think I let that one slip in an earlier thread, but whatever.)
In fact in one of John’s other books, God is defined precisely that way:
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.1 John 4:8.
I’ve been lurking in the threads as they developed, but John has not. So, almost trivially, one cannot reasonably assume he meant the same thing by “love” as the group has agreed to define the term. Also, I will say that I have always interpreted this passage as saying love (however defined) is one of God’s attributes, not that it is the sum total of his essense.
BTW, I’m waiting for the debate to decide whether to participate in depth and, if I do, will accept the ground rules. I’m breaking “radio silence” here only in the hope of keeping the definition phase as fruitful as it has been to date. I mean this as a contribution, not a derailment.
It is true that God is love, but what does that mean to you? I have not known what love really is till I began to know God. Human love is not the same, at least in my experience, which agrees with the verses of John, as if God is love you can’t know love without also knowing God, as they are the same.
By it’s very definition we defined to know love you must know God. And to know God you have to know Jesus.
I think this is the line i’d be interested in, too. Love defined as the means by which goodness is conveyed would seem to require conveyers, if that makes sense. In order for goodness to be conveyed, we require volitional beings to convey it, via the process (yes, bad analogy, I know) of love. If God is defined as love, if God is the “means”, by whose volition are those means enacted?
That question may be linked to another. Jesus is treated as a volitional being, and fair enough. But defining God solely as love would appear not to leave room to make God a volitional being. Is it correct to say (or treat) God as a being with will, and what is the difference between God and the love expressed between people that means one has volition and the other does not?
A final question (at least, so far ;)). Were there no volitional beings, if God is love, then since there are no conveyers could there be no God?
Lib, could you edit the following if I’m not tracking correctly?
Here on Earth, Jesus is (not was or will be, is) the means by which goodness is conveyed via flesh-based free moral agents (and, conceivably, by silicone, cellulose or other-based free moral agents elsewhere).
John keeps referring to Jesus because, when it comes to goodness, Jesus is the reference standard for us fleshy humans. Jesus’ body came into existence and winked out of existence, but whenever two or more of us are edified, the essence of Jesus is occurring in existence. (I suppose you could think of it as Jesus being both a noun and a verb: noun = identity, verb = process).
It’s somewhat analogous to the YouTube performance by Lang Lang posted earlier in the thread. For the sake of analogy, we could say that the YouTube performance was essentially perfect, the reference standard for Liebestraum. That doesn’t mean that you or I can’t perform Liebestraum whenever we feel like it.
Wonderful! Thank you. And what a good point you make!
Since this is the epistemology thread, it seemed only fitting to me that we open with something about knowledge from John’s point of view: namely, that those who do not know love do not know God (because God is love). As to whether John meant the same thing by love that I mean by love, I do intend to get into that in quite some detail. So stand by, keep lurking, and please participate whenever you have a question or need a point of clarification. And since you’ve followed the discussion from the beginning, you’re exactly the sort of participant that we will need in the debate.
The meat of this, I will reserve for the debate thread, since I will be presenting a loose proof tying all this together, but for now I will say that we may assume that God is a free moral agent, owing to the nature of love. (Conveyence implies movement from one agent to another.) Free moral agents make uncoerced aesthetical judgments. Goodness is the edification (the increase in value or worth) of free moral agents. God, therefore, is the source of goodness, and is the means by which goodness is conveyed.
We’ll uncover more of this sort of thing as we dig deeper into John.
Another term I often use instead of “conveyed” is “facilitated”. And so it is fair to look at God as the conveyor or faciliator of goodness. I think the negation makes the meaning more clear, actually. In other words, were there no God, there would be no goodness conveyed among free moral agents. (That is proof, via modus tolens, that God is the source of goodness, but I’d rather reserve that sort of statement for the next OP.)
As a free moral agent, God has will. Jesus, as represented by John, is God visiting His creation. His will, is the means by which He accomplished this (and the means by which he accomplishes everything He accomplishes).
If there were no conveyence of goodness, then yes, a biconditional implication arises: there would be no God.
Yes. Well, I’d put it a bit differently. It’s more like the “wherever two or more are gathered in my name” sort of thing. Matthew 18:20
I think that when you and I are good to one another, Jesus is the agent who conveys my goodness to you and/or vice versa. This is much in the same way that two animals are herded together. You or I seek to do good, the other of us is in need of goodness, and we two are brought together. John teaches this when he quotes Jesus as saying, “I am the good shepherd.”
Indeed, I would say that we are encouraged to. John says that Jesus teaches that we will do even greater things than He. John 14:12
God would be in a rather special position then, in that while we as free moral agents may express love, and love itself is something that may be expressed, God comprises both - he’s both the facilitator and the facilitated.
As to your second part - is it your position, then, that not only is God the facilitator of goodness, but he is necessary for the facilitation of goodness; being a free moral agent alone is not enough to facilitate goodness? That the existence of love (and, indeed, goodness, since it cannot be conveyed) without God is an impossibility?
Surely it’s the motivation by which he accomplished that - his numerous powers are the means.
Wouldn’t this be confined to that which is God’s opinion of goodness? That is to say, let’s imagine a world in which nothing God considers to be good occurs. However, because we mortal types have differing opinions, by some of our opinions, good is being conveyed. Is this a possibility?
O.K., looks like I’m tracking fairly closely so far.
As the agent who conveys/shepherds, what existence, if any, does Jesus have? Let’s grant that I have (or more accurately, am) essence that has emerged into existence, seeking or needing good, and so is Joe Blow over there. Jesus is also here, bringing us together, setting up a goodness pipeline.
I’m trying to understand what sort of existence Jesus has in this scenario. I can see Joe Blow, I can poke him with my finger, and he can do the same to me. Not so with Jesus. It occurred to me that perhaps any awareness of essence is evidence that an essence has emerged into existence, but if that were the case, there would be no way to distinguish essence from existence.
Also, I’m curious why you’ve opened the epistemology section with quotes from the bible (Yeah, I know the title of the OP… bear with me here). There’s the standard “So a guy wrote something in a book… a lot of guys write stuff in books”, followed by pointing out that a lot of other people have read the same book and come away with vastly different interpretations.
Is your purpose in introducing the bible (besides the fact that’s where they wrote about Jesus) to demonstrate that your interpretation is as defensible, if not more so, than the other interpretations? Or is it something else I’m not getting?
These are some *great *questions. From *both *of you.
Yes, that’s right.
It is my belief that that is in fact the whole reason that He created man — or perhaps more precisely decided that at some point in the evolutionary progress of species, that one had emerged into whom He could breathe His Spirit. You may also regard this, if you wish, as the homo sapien brain having special capabilities, having to do with the limbic system, that makes contact between God and us, qua physical beings, possible (You can Google the research of reputable neurological researchers and neurosurgeons, like VS Ramachandran, whose curriculum vitae is outstanding among his peers).
"Which one of these categories does mystical experience fall into? Why is the revealed truth of such transcendent experiences in any way “inferior” to the more mundane truths that we scientists dabble in? Indeed, if you are tempted to jump to this conclusion, just bear in mind that one could use exactly the same evidence – the involvement of the temporal lobes in religion – to argue for, rather than against, the existence of God."VS Ramachandran, M.D., Ph. D. Phantoms in the Brain, pp 184-185
Regardless of how you want to put it, God made man as a free moral agent, just like Himself, for the sole purpose of propogating or increasing goodness. Why? Because goodness is what He finds to be the most aesthetically valuable thing. The more goodness, the more love; the more love, the more God. It is how God “grows”. (I’m leaving that term undefined for the moment. The context should suffice to give it meaning.)
Goodness, of course, is available only from a free moral agent, who must be free to choose love over sin. Otherwise, without the opportunity for sin, love changes meaning, and becomes something that cannot be obstructed (through sin).
God chooses to love. And He chooses to do it freely and volitionally, just as we do (or usually don’t). If He were to choke off that same freedom from us, then the species He chose would have no freewill, and therefore not be like Him. But we learn through Jesus, by way of John the Beloved, that we are one with God. (The famous prayer by Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane, in John 17, especially 20-22.)
“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one.”
The freedom is given by Him, but the volition is ours alone.
Yes, exactly. Goodness is not possible without God, and vice-versa. It’s a biconditional implication.
Will, power. Tomayto, tomahto.
We must keep in mind our definitions (and I know how hard that is to do.) You are asking, if you will forgive the paraphrase, whether tearing one another down and generally de-edifying one another might lead to there being a good world, God’s moral and aesthetical choices notwithstanding. And I would think the answer is no. It isn’t the case that God has an opinion about whether this thing or that thing is good, but a case of whether free moral agents have been edified.
That’s why this treatement of Jesus (and God) is so unusual. It isn’t about morality at all; it’s about aesthetics. And so, God does not judge us. And neither does His Son. Or so we learn from John the beloved.
"Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son."John 5:22
"You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one."John 8:15
Great!
Jesus IS the goodness pipeline (I’ve called him a “counduit” before); i.e., He is that which facilitates (or conveys) goodness. His existence is metaphysical. He is Spirit. You won’t contact Him through senses like touch. You will contact Him through “worship”. I’ll leave that undefined, unless you need it defined.
"God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."John 4:24
Well, there is a dual existence, particularly where man is concerned. There is a physical existence and a metaphysical existence (the God within us.) This is taught by Jesus through John:
Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”
Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit."John 3:1-6
Baptists (and most Christians for that matter) have interpreted that section to mean that people must be baptized. But I do not interpet it that way. To be born of water simply means to be born of a woman (as when her water breaks). Flesh giving birth to flesh, as Jesus describes. But being born again simply means a reordering of the mind or brain (the flesh) to be receptive to God (the spirit).
Man is therefore a dual creature. He is an animal like any other, but he is essentially spirit. Just like God. This is what is meant when you hear that we are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26, etc.). It doesn’t mean that God has two arms, two legs, and a head. It means that man is essentially spirit.
It’s simply as I told you in this post: “But the source of knowledge that will be used in Part IV is the knowledge (or lessons, or parables, or statements, or what-have-you) that we have received from Jesus almost exclusively through John the Beloved.”
We could choose any arbitrary epistemic source, from what God has reveald to George W Bush to what God has revealed to Saint Francis of Assisi, I have chosen what God has revealed to John the Beloved as my epistemic source.
Incidentally, when I am quoting passages like John 5:22 with quotation marks, I am quoting Jesus, and not John. These are things that John has indicated that Jesus has said.
Following Revenant Threshold’s question: Could God have a different concept about what is ‘good’? And could the spiritual mechanics of humanity be set up in a way to facilitate this alternate concept of ‘good’?
Is ‘good’ then something that God decides, and imposes on the universe? Does that affect our status as free moral agents?
Or, if ‘good’ is somehow separate or a priori to God, then God is that much compromised. Which doesn’t make sense to me.
If I’m fumbling the definitions, then the question is all my fault. Is it formally proper to use quotes around the word ‘good’?
Goodness was defined fairly early on (Part II) as being that which edifies; i.e., that which builds up, amerliorates, or in aesthetic terms, that which adds value or worth. So, for example, if you do a kind deed for a stranger, the goodness is not in the deed. Rather, the goodness is in the edification of both you and the stranger. You are edified (assuming you are normal) because you are emotionally and experientially edified by the experience of extending charity. (See, for example all the expressions of happiness and contentment in the Polycarp thread by the givers.) And the stranger is edified by your kindness, depending on what you did. Maybe give him food, shelter, clothing, or even just a word of affirmation. In other words, you both feel better about yourselves than before you encountered one another. That’s only one example, of course. Edification can take almost any form, from the afformentioned good deed all the way to an economic transaction that benefits both parties.
And so, goodness is what goodness is. (That’s the nature of essence, defined in the OP.) It is not the case that God decided what would be good, and then issued edicts accordingly. That would make for an ethical Jesus or a moral Jesus. Rather, God found goodness to be aesthetically pleasing to Him, and so He chose to pursue it, to expand it, to make it grow. CS Lewis once said that God values goodness so much that, where there a creature more good than He, He would worship it. I hope that answers your question, and I greatly appreciate your participation.
I’m not entirely sure if I’m out of place asking this question, but just for the benefit of this distant observer: are you meaning for this to sound as mechanistic as it does? For instance, consider a computer: it can certainly perform evaluations, indeed, in a manner of speaking, that’s all it does; and it’s also as uncoerced as you and me in doing so, i.e. bound only by its own rules that determine what it holds to be valuable. Now, picture such a computer having something like an ‘is edified’-flag, which is set when another computer sends it a certain kind of signal; the other computer, upon reading out that flag, will set its own in return. Now, if I get your definitions, this is goodness, and the signal (or signals) thus is love. Does this actually capture what you’re saying in any way?
I think that’s a very good analogy, and possibly could simulate the condition of love, so long as there were many (say, thousands or millions) of instances of free moral agent objects. These objects could be given a set of rules such that it is possible for each individual object to determine what is valuable and what is not. A “valuable” flag might be some number in a range of numbers — say, the very familiar 1-10. A “worthless” flag might be set to null. (But not zero. Zero would indicate that there is a value, but a low one; and we have established evil as a state of aesthetic emptiness.)
Love, then, is the main program itself — something like the Microsoft “main()” subroutine from hell in Windows 98 and 3.X. It would provide the functions necessary for free moral agents to connect with one another. All null settings become ignored, perhaps even reinitialized. And objects that value goodness above all else (say, at a level 10) will merge into one another and become objects of great “power” — even merging into the main sub routine. The main subroutine does itself have a value flag for goodness set at 10 (with simulated freedom of choice). Objects that value other things might themselves also merge, and even eventually separate themselves from the main program. They cannot overpower the main subroutine because if it senses obstruction of goodness, it can return low values or even null values.
But yes, I would say your analogy is an interesting one. A tweak here and a tweak there of what both I said and what you said would make a nice God Sims program. But, alas, it would be, after all, only pseudo-random asssignments of what to value and how much. But all in all, I’d say your train of thought is well thought out. Well done.
The merging of the objects that value goodness above all else (as opposed to, say, material wealth or fame) pretty much echoes the message from John the Beloved in 1 John 4:12 and 4:16:
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. … And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.And thus, the objects that value goodness merge (or grow).
(By the way, that is the second time John the Beloved has said that God is love.)