Wednesday, April 04, 2012
In-der-Blog-sein
AHB reads Noah Horwitz’s "Reality in the Name of God."
AHB reads Noah Horwitz’s "Reality in the Name of God."
The *metaphysical* God will not suffice as an answer to the question of the meaning of being because by zeroing in on God as explanation one simply lands in a loop since all beings – no matter their status – are, and I hate to use this phrase, always already ‘characterised’ by being by virtue of, well, ‘being a being’. One says “this being grounds all beings” and yet one has not answered “what is being?” It is, as Horwitz nicely puts it, a ‘bluff’.¶ 4:51 PM
In this exact sense God is a barrier to understanding being especially if we affirm Heidegger’s stress on disclosure.
Comments:
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As always, thank you for this. I do not keep up with the arguments over theology, so it is helpful to catch a glimpse of the contenders and their assertions.
I cannot understand how one might be informed of MH's view of the abyss and still look for help from him in defense of a creator God. When I add to that MH's careful analysis of 'nothing,' which I understand to be antithetical to the abyss, I am in a different world from absolutist theism.
In that world, I find myself wondering that, since life is good, is it not necessary also that death is good? Not as celebrated by the Easter miracle but as with the human need to let go. If taking hold is good, so is letting go. Here MH's restatements of 'phusis' as making an appearance, coming to a stand, and passing away make sense to me. Immortality, when it subdues mortality, rots our socks.
I cannot understand how one might be informed of MH's view of the abyss and still look for help from him in defense of a creator God. When I add to that MH's careful analysis of 'nothing,' which I understand to be antithetical to the abyss, I am in a different world from absolutist theism.
In that world, I find myself wondering that, since life is good, is it not necessary also that death is good? Not as celebrated by the Easter miracle but as with the human need to let go. If taking hold is good, so is letting go. Here MH's restatements of 'phusis' as making an appearance, coming to a stand, and passing away make sense to me. Immortality, when it subdues mortality, rots our socks.
It also occurs to me that one is justified to insist that religion relate itself to realism. I am not able to distinguish between the types of realism, and I am aware that scientific realism leaves no room for ethical or moral values.
In my religious tradition, the respect for realism dates back at least to the Arian controversy in 4th Century Christianity, with its insistence that Jesus was "like" God and not "the same as" God. That tradition survived only around the edges of Christian development, to emerge again in the left wing of the 16th Century Protestant Reformation. It remains tiny by comparison today. The appeal to realism, however, remains as strong as ever.
cross-posted from AHB
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In my religious tradition, the respect for realism dates back at least to the Arian controversy in 4th Century Christianity, with its insistence that Jesus was "like" God and not "the same as" God. That tradition survived only around the edges of Christian development, to emerge again in the left wing of the 16th Century Protestant Reformation. It remains tiny by comparison today. The appeal to realism, however, remains as strong as ever.
cross-posted from AHB
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