Friday, July 10, 2015

Scientia and Scripture (Stream-of-consciousness Mentation)

Our "paltry knowledge" of sensibles is all that we have in terms of natural scientia. It is somewhat difficult to go beyond our phenomenal experience and know whether light is anything other than waves or particles. God might be light in a manner that transcends our ability to grasp, but we have no way of knowing whether he is transcendently light or not apart from revelation. We certainly cannot apprehend this datum from experience of what Kant calls "phenomena." What I do know is that ancient Greek writers employed the morpheme FWS (in similar contexts) as a Figuren der semantischen Deviation for the divine sphere. Isis is said to be FWS PASI BROTOISI and the very being of Isis is spoken of as FWS KAI ZWH (See BDAG). Compare John 1:3ff.

In the NT, Jesus also calls his followers the light of the world (Mt 5:14-16). Additionally, the context of 1 John 1:5 indicates that John is not talking about some transcendent light (analogous to light in the material cosmos) that is waveless or particleless: he is referring to truth, moral rectitude and goodness. Platonic thinking won't work here. There quite probably are not any Platonic Forms or Ideas that exceed our sensible experience such that masculinity or femininity subsist as objects of consciousness or divine properties in some celestial sphere that's characterized by noetic qualitativeness.

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