Bible Studies

Bearing God and Self in Thought

by Walter Boswell
06/08/18
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                                      BEARING GOD AND SELF IN THOUGHT

                                     (from The Philosophy of Contradiction¹)

AGAINST FAITHLESS EXISTENCE

The sum of my thoughts shall not make God, or to the mind is worship owed. I know little, while only the greatest shall know itself: holding the infinite is understandable … in words maybe. Of heaven just perceived, from thus shall I make stars?

Wonder-thought is realized. But soon other thoughts surpass it. Forbear with me to think a God, visible unto all of us, who has no need of proof.

Yet in blindness here I question. Am I creation or subsistant? They have taken our faith in the much odd manner and the many strange ways to represent a truth.

A multitude of arguments profess the necessary God. Oft times their premises would seem such as to dismiss the possibly unknown reality. We may imagine elements whose motions are all-times and all-ways, existent centers of causes intricate and unseen.

Tis too much for me to assess the nature of the whole universe, to inspect in its entirety the immediate atmosphere from which life and knowledge is drawn. Station deliberates whether physics should prescribe in the graphics of the polynomial a defined existence bending and bowing in the nearness of my continuum, but outwardly gone; or the repetitious sine forever running, confined within a certain range, and no longer suggestive of any providence. With logical persistence derivatives might resolve to zero or peradventure remark forever on.

The theory is that that which can-be can also not-be and what now is at some time was not. Let not permutation destroy our testament. When dust is dispelled from surface to surface, and we not behold it in every fixed moment of time, do we then conclude it never was?

All thought positions God on the line of creation: half in trust, half in reason. Stairways and ladders lead off to heaven, characterizing in ourselves and in our world a need for validating truth. Like Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, we lie on our backs and stare up to heaven to paint the picture that we want to see there, hoping that a face looks down kindly on our faint chants and bowed knees, and smiles in recognition.

I am too used to pictures set within their frames. And because I farm, I think all seeds are sown. From thence, tis easy said I came not into this world a maker of myself. Should heaven and earth be one, I shall not suffice to comprehend it all. However, should days be numbered, they behoove a primal force. Species, changing even through recognizable means, whilst taken in a direction uncircuitous, still beckon start. Having witnessed the states of tempered growth, men abstain from motive; worry ye in a science if the simple cell carried flight, if some early spider was bound nonchalantly to spin or by artistic eye and convenient filament to create a perfect web … if I, in like and heaving manner, came bequeathed tools in hand; or if I by force of thought wisely and provisionally conscripted unto myself a sapient intelligence.

All in all, who makes set so that the fittest survives? Matter contends with matter, light with light; but with what regard are laws sustained? Assume a relatedness to the omniscient and our answers will rest with him.

Nevertheless, such concession would invite Creator – himself being what we are not: free of universe and creation, accommodating but not accommodated; our theology to envision Him as independent and finding necessity amidst Himself. Lest by trusting in beginnings we gainsay logic to contrive a succession of rulers over heaven, only to come to source, the integral of God (infinity squared), or confess to existence none.

Admittedly there is no proof here. We walk securely on floors, not walls; yet will a fly adhere to ceiling. The atheist or self-doubter in me well asks, is the Lord of the universe so sheltered or so short-handed as to require from someone missionary assistance or prophetic messaging? Following such reasoning, then there should be no persons of service ever, or for that matter, no earth, and no universe even; for what ‘need’ does an omnipotent God have of any creation. Yet, because the universe does exist, the earth exists, the Christian exists, I must assume unto myself a necessary existence, if not in the doing (a hands-on earth), then in the being. The writer creates the book, but the book declares the author. There must be a need in God for all of us at some point of his reflection.

What more is God, than to say He is Lord? It would be a righteous earning to say He is good. Now how dubious sounds the apologue of the amoralist who in a flower finds no fragrance, in a faith no justification. He perceives not a natural code for that man and animal might infrequently offend. ‘No good or evil’, what have you said, since the good I miss! With expressive meaning you argue words you claim to have no meaning.

O’ cry vanity of vanities; if all is vanity, then all so is proper and elite. Believe, then paradise would fleshen, Hades medicinally allay. In refraction I saw you at the well where you drank your fill.

I lonely dismayed at this, the errancy of theological doctrine, and felt vacant: that what is given unto some, others must travail after. I am condemned because I think and doubt.

Enter we now into the vale of tears, all for goodness’ sake. Children require wise upbringing, but what will be at the end that was not at the beginning, or could not have been? And from whom will real goodness come tomorrow that yesterday knew us not? Change is arbitrary to the maker of all things.

TEN PROPOSITIONS OF A PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY

Proposition 1 – I exist. Exist: I²

                Let ‘I’ be that which reasons. I shall endeavor to prove my own existence. But in order to prove that ‘I’ exist, I must first exist to do the proving – my appeal to logic has originally an appeal. The thought cannot realize the thinker. Either I am or I am not. The proof, at least, of existence is in its own recognition. Upon knowing, I know that I am.

Proposition 2 – I exist in a fashion³

                Nevertheless, how much of this is worldly: summoning some implanted truth, to yet think the borrowed knowledge of reality? But thus saying, I have a reality from which to borrow.

                Otherwise I shall consider reason to be the entire product of this thinking self. A word comes to be, is projected, reflected, and received. From whence then incites experience or my philosophy? Divinity questions naught. I question. A mind possessing all knowledge and truth seeks not elsewhere for answers. From uneasiness a reason to disclaim creatorship within.

Proposition 3 – I am more than mind⁴

                No, not safe, but self. I am myself, to shall not doubt that I exist.  I have no doubts which will deliver me from consciousness nor, once expressed, will relieve my existence. The thoughts of me are real, with only words for substance.

                That I have reason and a self to reason, I must by contingency believe. When I believe that I am, I judge myself to be, for recognition involves judgement. Part of believing is accepting, wherein judgement is approved. Now I concern myself with feeling. There can be no knowing acceptance without the feeling which consoles doubt and justifies it to actuality.

                These believing emotions (motional mediator to the a-motional) blend almost indistinguishably into physical sensations, which lead outward into material form, into life and a sensitive existence. The senses have a hold upon the mind: pain and pleasure, happiness and hate, longing and belonging; what sleep does not dream away.

Proposition 4 – The world exists⁵

                After all the reasons it still remains: the imposition of things likened unto me, even those things of little sense. As an unrelenting truth, my thoughts and feelings are guided by what holds my attention. And perception comes in terms of worldly manifestation. If logic doubts existence, then logic, having also existence, must be doubt-worthy. It conforms to standard.

                Tomorrow it may happen that I shall wake up unwarned and unasked in another universe of strange dimensions; yet in the moment then, like the moment now, I shall still be compelled to call that which holds my attention that which exists. The conscious mind is conscious of the world.

Proposition 5 – Acceptance is tantamount to faith⁶

                Having doubted, I shall once again believe, but believing with a faith rather than a logical reason. Reasoning proved what it had to prove, as dictated by appearances in my surroundings and by the seeming gravity of things guiding my introspection. Who is outside himself, an entity apart? I asked the world a question, and the worldliness in me did answer it.

                So will it, my faith is the answer. I trust in a real and certain existence. To believe otherwise is to accept a ponderous creed, a sanctimonious faith without purpose or effect – a faith which believes I have no faith to believe. There must be a knowledge which leads to faith, if only that our knowledge is faith. And though sometimes I err, I am assured by an independent subsistence of what I believe; finally to believe there is faith, an accord betwixt the universe and the universal ‘I’.

Proposition 6 – From order comes an understanding of truth⁷

                I discover an order, a pattern or meaning to things. Diversity is established before us in systems of related constructions. Its own variety must bring error. Order is the fitting in of error, and by further variance, the error of an error.

                The universe has order. This is apparent. Truth is a conformity to order. This is by definition. A planet’s behavior is true when it obeys the laws of motion. A predator when it kills acts truly.

Proposition 7 – Truth is set in faith⁸

                I shall say, “There is no truth”. How then is this statement true? And what becomes of the understanding necessary to proclaim it? If there is truth in a conscious awareness, then there must also be truth in that which I am aware. I discover a present and referenced order because the world has given me placement.

                One truth is that I with best determination can for the nonce but reason to a finite end. Given a challenge to my vindication of logic, I would say it is likewise an apparency, a judgement, a recognition of and by this practicing mind.

                Surely there seems no revelation, not so much as to know what is already known! Faith must suffice to render even truth possible.

Proposition 8 – Reasoning is liable⁹

                As I have written, so it seems, in that logic agrees and I agree with logic. An assurance by self brings surety to the self-aware, if one but believes. However, we know enough to sometimes gainsay thought, disregard our senses, withhold trust. In so doing we compromise on exactitude; but as with magic and illusion, the tricks of deception must still be sensually realized and counter-confirmed.

                There, also, to say, I feel this questioning of a thinking self, brought on by an antithetical wave of disbelief, is merely time related. I ask because conditions afford the time to ask. Philosophy is extravagance. I write with the same perspective as the freed prisoner who once believed the world was his jail cell, but now believes it is totally without bars.

Proposition 9 – Trust is the strength of knowledge¹⁰

                The power of judgement leads to sound beliefs. Next it leads to doubt. The claim on knowledge is the certainty which it holds for us.

                Then actual knowledge is dependent upon the possibility of change. Trust abides in a behavioral creature, a predictable wind, a sedentary stone, even more certainly in the abstractness of figures.

Proposition 10 – Personal knowledge acquaints me with myself¹¹

                I have a memory, and was once a child (it seems to me without a consciousness). So then, how could I know anything? Trust must have come in inherent faith: in a principle of expectation, a prelude to reason. Still, though I believe, I shall not know why. Just as the body appears suitably shaped with legs to walk on, with arms to lift things, with eyes to see, with ears to hear, and all else for a defined existence, so does the mind seem suitably shaped with the expectant notions of what we are to encounter: born to suckle, to accept the teachings of parents, to favor the testimony of many over the testimony of few. What these beliefs predict about the eventuality of things need not always come to pass; yet more than a coincidence of being, I inherently hold on to what was innately given.

WHERE GOD ABIDES

                As has been already noted, and not yet written before, God is a god of contradiction. No one has seen the face of God, unless it was Moses. More accurately, no one has envisioned the face of God either optically or intellectually. A proverbial phrase from the Bible is ‘with God all things are possible’, which has often been diminished in philosophy since, if all things are possible, then it should no longer be possible to perform the impossible, to create a rock too heavy for God to lift, among a plethora of other fantastic feats and academic achievements; even more disconcertingly, for God to create something from absolutely nothing, apart from his own embodiment.

                In this treatise it shall be demonstrated that such statements are irrelevant to the nature of God, whether one believes he exists or not. It is within the nature of argument itself, or if you prefer, the argument process, that belief is confounded; to wit, the elusiveness of God mystically takes wing. I shall see in this deeper philosophical understanding the reason why I do not exist, the reason you or anyone or anything does not exist, even though ‘I’ wonder out loud and vaunt counsel against myself.

                An estrangement befalls me as I seek to confer with him who defies all reason. It is like Aquinas, and yet not so equitably resolved, for if I say I have found him, he is not the God I seek. Every effect has its cause, and every cause its presumptive pre-effect. Hence whatever is moved must be moved by another. Something in prior change begets something in secondary change. But the prior motion must have had its previous motivator for nothing in finite creation preordains its own motion. This prior motivator, even if it were just a ‘force’ acting upon real ‘matter’, must have had its own prior motivator, which in turn had its own prior motivator, and so forth. Such a sequence of motivating dominos cannot continue indefinitely (i.e. to infinity), else there would be no first mover sufficient unto itself to have initiated its start. As Aquinas then profited, this sufficient first mover (first cause), existing outside cause and effect, must be (by consent of faith) God¹².

                This God, this glorious God, which seems to us a God of contradictions: who lives, and yet cannot die, who responds and yet cannot move; who causes and yet not himself is caused! Why the argument of cause and effect does not lead us to God: let us position ourselves mentally in a carnival’s hall of mirrors. Suddenly we see someone else standing before us, or at least we assume it to be someone real before us – for upon reaching to touch him we discover he is just an image in a mirror. Thus we move across to where the image apparently gains reflection, only to find it, too, is merely a reflection. We proceed to the next mirror, then the next, and the next after that, continuously, still confidant that somewhere stands the real person. Though even once found, what have we encountered? Another like unto ourselves. And the light waves on which we sought back can only retrace to a source similar. Verily and sadly, nothing new is discovered at journey’s end. The light is real; its source must be real – foreclosing any sequential construction of cause and effect. The real cause must always prepossess the real effect; therefore reality (causality) is never escaped. [The hand of God has touched me; hence He is no longer transcendent but real.] Our vision of God could no more be the First Cause than the Last.

                Per Anselm^{3 (above)}, God is a being than which none greater can be thought. God is greater than the conception of creature existence, otherwise the creation would rise above the creator. Now we begin to contemplate; and it enters into our understanding, that were we to compile any thoughts concerning God, we would make shortcoming of our own definition of God if we do not think he exists, because real existence is greater (than our imaginings), and then some mind could conceive of something greater than He.

                Thinking does not produce realized being. Moreover, this puts God on the line of creation. ‘Creator’ must be above us, above our thoughts. Even to think God exists is to denigrate his being. These proofs are mere constructs aimed in the vicinity of God: like ladders to heaven, with no uppermost prop (no divine hand) for support.

                Some earth-bound remedy to this paradox can be found in other analogies. How is it possible for matter to radiate mind? Presently the answer is with us, and not latent in its subject. Between the motional and the amotional is the emotional. Between the vital and the sedentary is the dying skin always in replenishment. Between the ground and space is the atmosphere, repelled by a heavier surface and attracted by gravitation to the earth. Presumptively, we may think to know where the last air molecule sits; although it is far from known whereby life could somehow sublimate itself, nor how or in what manner of shared existence heaven must accordingly condescend to being merely real. Most physical comparisons describe an intermediary mixed of its two adjoining components, as becoming a watery foam. From this and other quaint inferences, we may surmise a partial resolution of heaven-earth contrivance. Between God and man was the Word made flesh. The thought (Word) is oft forgotten, but never forsaken. It flies to no one, but stays with me. Then knowledge (Christ) have I always. Beyond this, I am not real to God, any more than my words to you the reader make the two of us mind conversant; fearing now, what mortal prayer or kindred-sighing in afterthought has ever sparked one instant of divine attention.

                So then, how is it not better to live like everyone else, like animals? With zero concern for others, they seek to get what they want when they want it, or to be consumed in the trying. At least they risk no qualms about heaven in their worldly doings and, like God, shed not one emotion.

                To ask … what I understand – all things and no things: that each level has a higher; from heights even principles seem cracked. There are levels of truth, implying though a predilection to falsehood. By reasoning against reason to believe an independent God exists, how much further is it to believe in this philosophy of contradiction (ostensibly a lessening to dependence should entail), that God creates against creation, in defiance of direction; thereby he is exonerated of self? [Or as has already been declared elsewhere more elementally, ‘creation is simply the movement of God’, wherefrom reality, out of the shadow of his reflected passing, saunters into flagrant subsistence.] My point of reference, it follows, is not a star or a spaceship ride away. Still space over moving time – contrary forces some more pending than others, so as to determine a God for whom only Truth has substance, with sin more solid than the human flesh which conceived it. But the Holy Spirit is God’s hand in creation; wherefore, it may come down to us from the Lord’s dimension that a new self is manifested in the image of God.

                Of this realization take heed. The soul of man is in the universe; the universe of man is in the soul. At what temperature do objects require an intake for movement? At what speed does energy lose its station and become omnipresent? At what pressure does mass cease to contract and commences to shine? We boldly state, “The giver is in decline, the taker is on the increase; the higher side of the seesaw must fall, the lower side must rise”. Rules of perception only. How much we ‘know’ is scarcely ‘known’ to be all.

                And what of heaven? God should be, in kind, not real, for being real He is no more God. The Lord must be beyond reality and above contradictions in order to thwart the wisdom of this world. And what of me? I love to think the thought (Word) which can never be forsaken. My breast! My breast! The prophets cried, for what their fainting hearts yet could feel. My brain! My brain! Now I must cry, for what my feinting mind yet can reveal.

                When Moses humbly asked, who am I, Lord, that I should free the Israelites, and who shall I say sent me? By turn of phrase the Lord responded, I am who send you. Only the Lord has merit and only He can consecrate your mission (life) with meaning. When Elijah visualized the Lord at Mount Horeb, he did not see His image, but only the whisper of his essence in passing. We too have seen ‘God’ as personified in Jesus Christ, though his image, like his message, remains mysterious. God abides only in the extreme, in the place where observation must be reflected in order to preserve existence. What only the dying have seen, what only the senseless have conceived and felt – all toward a countenance not of assorted virtues or accumulated wisdom, but of sheer grace and seeming emptiness. Behind every impossible logical quandary, the signpost of heaven is surveilled. At every point where the universe turns back on itself, God has placed angels around the garden to deflect the interjections of man. Yea, the universe is open before us, but it is closed to thought.

¹ Boswell, Walter (anonymous). (1982). Autobiography of No One. Great Neck, NY: Todd & Honeywell, Inc.

In the methodology and paraphrasing of:

                ² Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy.

³ St. Anselm. Proslogion and Monologion.

⁴ Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature.

⁵ Berkeley, George. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge.

⁶ Mill, John Stuart. Three Essays on Religion.

⁷ Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason.

⁸ Russell, Bertrand. The Problems of Philosophy.

⁹ Kierkegaard, Soren. The Concept of Dread.

¹⁰ Ayer, Alfred J. Language, Truth, and Logic.

¹¹ Socrates via The Dialogues of Plato.

¹² Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles.