Czarzy
Critical Thinker
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2005
- Messages
- 293
Since you are a Graduate Poster and I am simply a new blood, I won't ask you to say please.
Well to begin with, the word define comes into English from the Latin meaning: to set set down limits upon, set down ends. Ergo (boy the cheap Latin refs. just keep coming...) using the word and concept of define may not be the best way to go in responding to what I think you're asking.
I have said this before, I believe that in the search for or understanding of God, we should try and primarily use an aspect of our psyche other than the intellect. For example, if one goes into the Louvre and sees the Venus DeMilo, one doesn't (normally) appreciate the statue by using pi to calculate the total area of both her breasts. That would be, well, wrong for a better word. Rather, one uses one's sense of art, beauty, creation, and the like to appreciate the classical statue.
In a similar vein, using definitions and pi to define God, in my oppinion, just isn't the way to go in the search for or understanding of God. Rather, we should use another aspect of the psyche other than the intellect. What might that aspect of our psyche be? The only thing I can think of at this time is that it is the inner part of the inner being that loves at its most profound level--not love for self pleasure or survival, not love for romance or procreation--but love as the utmost action in and for the utmost reality available to the human race.
Yet as the poverty of language prohibits us from achieving a full definition, still we must talk and write about God--that is, if we are so inclined.
In Judeo-Christian theology, God revealed God's self to Moses and the ancient Hebrews. In Exodus chapter three, the author refers to God as saying: "I AM WHO AM." Some theologians have concluded that God revealed God's self as BEING. God wasn't in the mountain, in the air, in the water, in the clouds. Rather, God revealed God's self as BEING itself. Additionally, the name for God, YAHWEH is a derivative of the Hebrew word, hayah or 'to be.' Thus, in J-C theology, we can begin with our understanding of God as 'what' God is: BEING (ie Spirit).
The nature of BEING or God can be described with the word aseity. Aseity means having no limitations, and here is where the poverty of language comes into play. How can we describe aseity with language being that our minds are limited and that the very nature of language is to set down limits upon a subject(s) for the sake of communication? So therefore, in a conversation on God, we must, as the Chinese aphorism goes, not mistake the moon for the finger that is pointing at it.
Yet if we are so inclined, we can use words to help us consider God to be BEING with no limitations unto that BEINGNESS (whether God is limited in not being able to make a square circle or red blue in the physical world is a matter for another conversation...). In such considertion, imagine yourself (because you have 'being' as well) to have no limitations: no end, no beginning, no flesh, no worries, no forgetfulness, no deadlines, and so on--this may be a help in the understanding of God--if you imagine and not intellectualize. (Just my oppinion here)
Additionally, Christians believe that God somehow entered our space/time as the person commonly known as Jesus (the) Christ. The reasons staunch monotheistic Jews believed a man to be God was that they 'saw' him have power over nature, power over death, power over evil, power to forgive sins (and make people actually believe it), and power to spontaneously create matter--power they attributed only to God. With such power, with such authoritative teachings and authoritative teaching posture, and with a loving presence and personality that led him to an excrutiating, redemptive self-sacrifice and made at least one man want to lay his head on his chest during conversation, his followers eventually concluded he was Emmanuel--'God for us' incarnate.
Finally, Christians consider God, BEING, the Christ, to have the essential nature of Love. God is BEING with no limitations. God is Jesus (the) Christ-- God incarnate. God is Spiritual Love without limitations. And where the Spirit of Love is that proceeds from the person and personality of Christ, there is God also--as Holy Spirit--Spiritual Love.
Glad you could get that off your chest.
Now, what elucidation or opinion do you have that is relevant to the topic of this thread?
Mine is opinion: conspiracy theories are mind-candy: intriguing, but are not the most parsimonious inference of conclusion due to evidence.
A human being can try to objectively imagine the heights and depths of human actions and their results and yet still act in his own life in ways that seem ultimately petty to others but that are advantageous to his own immediate survival and comforts.
All people who, in retrospect, produced opi that others can both empathize with and take inspiration from, had to deal with mundane issues in their own lives. That they dealt with them in the best manner they thought of at the time, as we all should do, does not detract from the result of their more objective works.
Yes, a cadre of playwrites could have decided to write some works not under their own names but under a common pseudonym. For what purpose would they have done so? To provide a conundrum for future generations? How altruistic of them!
Not the most logical explanation for the evidence.
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