Relativity.
The foundation for all created things. First I will address what Relativity is, then I will address its purpose.
We are all familiar if, even if we don't understand, Einstein's theories of Special and General Relativity. I do not pretend to have a firm grasp on the physics, but essentially Einstein suggested time and space are connected, therefore "events that occur at the same time for one observer could occur at different times for another." If you'd like to read up on it, I'd recommend this. What I'm referring to as Relativity is only vaguely related to physics. The primary maxim of what I'll refer to as "Innate Relativity" is:
No one can, has or will experience anything exactly the same way as anybody else, ever.
What do I mean by experience? Anything you could possibly mean by it. You may be reading this post and getting something completely different than what I'm intending. I suggest that no matter how closely your understanding is to what I'm intending it will still be different. Because you are not me. You do not have any of the same experiences I have, because you cannot have experienced anything the same way I did. Its a grand circle, and it has massive implications.
The words I choose in this little treatise are both designed to express what I'm thinking and to connect to what you'll be thinking. Have you ever asked a question and gotten a totally unrelated answer? (A smarty pants would reply "potato") Of course you have, because misunderstanding is natural. Have you ever been asked to describe your pain? Its long been the medical profession's goal to be able to interpret a person's level of pain. This is categorically impossible. I cannot experience it for you, therefore I can only know as much as you express to me, and really only as much as I understand from your expression.
Before you start using Christ's suffering on the Cross or God's demand for human responsibility as counters to Innate Relativity, remember that those are examples of supernatural things. Innate Relativity is a way to understand the created world, not God. God is absolute. However, the church has been trying to understand God in our own terms for a long time. An honest evaluation of the development of theology allows us to consider new ways of understanding what we believe. Is the Hypostatic Union understandable in modern rationalistic terms? No. Good luck if you think it is. How about the Trinity? God's presence in Hell? An infinite Being? Sovereignty versus Free Will? Miracles?
Truth is attainable only through the Special Revelation of the Holy Spirit. Illumination. Everything else is a group of blind men feeling an elephant trying to describe it. One guy feels the trunk and thinks its a hose. One guy feels the tail and thinks its a whip. One guy feels the leg and thinks its a tree. Until the elephant makes noise they would have no clue. Why are they wrong? Can you clean something with the water from a elephant's trunk? Can you whip someone with an elephant's tail? Can you lean on an elephant's leg?
Well, that's enough words for now, thanks for reading. Thursday I'll concentrate of the Innate Relativity of Language.
Oh, and the Braves are 1-0. Homers from Freeman, Uggla and JUpton. Solid pitching from Avilan and E-Flo. Kimbrel's 2013 save count is at 1.
I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish through this post. I don't know of many thinking and cogent people who would tell you that two individuals can have an identical experience. That does not mean however that the reality of the thing being experienced is relative. It means that our ability to perceive is limited. Reality is relative to God not us. God is the prime reality. All reality then must flow from him and it does. Thus, the really real is real because of its relation to God. Does God experience things fully? He must or he is limited. Therefore can I know anything absolutely? Of course not. If I'm a blind man feeling an elephant, then I can't know absolutely that it is an elephant. However, I can know that it is hard. I may not know the absolutes of elephantness, but I do KNOW something which is real. It is only real because God made it real, and if I knew what God knew then I would know the totality of that elephant.
ReplyDeleteEssentially what I'm arguing is that your name for this maxim "innate relativity" is a misnomer. You are discussing the limitation of the human ability to know. And, I agree with your conclusion that no human being can no anything absolutely. However, my above paragraph hopefully heads off where I'm sure you are going with this. That is,that the nature of truth is relative because of the human inability to perceive truth fully.
@Shane Right, and inability for that truth to exist fully. That is God created a universe without absolutes to create a contrast wherewith we can value Him.
ReplyDeleteTruth does exist fully. Otherwise it wouldn't be true. You are basing the nature of truth off of our perception of it. That is like saying that a star is small. The essential problem is that for you if man cannot grasp something fully, then it must not be absolute. The problem is that you have left God out of that picture. My presupposition is that God exists, is prime reality, and is the starting point for all discussion. Is truth true for him? Then it is true for me. Can he know that I live absolutely? Yes, this is true. Therefore, my existence is true regardless of specific revelation from God.(on an aside if you are arguing that truth is true for God, but he made it relative for me then you must face the law of non contradictions)
ReplyDeleteIf you are arguing that I cannot know anything absolutely so that I will turn to God to base my life on Him as the absolute from which all reality flows, then I would completely agree. This is why I believe in the absolute authority of God's Word. Because outside of His Word I can't have any way of proving that even my own senses are reliable. It is true that my sense are reliable because God says so and assumes it as true in His Word.
I think it is an important distinction to make that I cannot perceive truth absolutely, but that truth is absolute. Because truth is not my truth it's God's. How would Proverbs work if truth was not absolute? In Proverbs there is no mention of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, or the Cross. We as NT believers would believe that for any thing good to be done then the Holy Spirit must be involved with that action. However, Proverbs assumes that the truths it lays down are general timeless truths. Of course there are exceptions, and the Holy Spirit is involved, but , in general, for believers and unbelievers alike, "a soft answer turns away wrath" for an unbeliever wrath isn't any better than peace, but the soft answer still produces the correct result. Why is this true? Because God made the world to work a certain way. God made humans to work a certain way. A way which is unique. If there was no absolute, then there would be no certain way which we were made to live. Then glorification would not be an improvement it would be an alteration. When I'm glorified I won't be less human, I will be more human then I've ever been before. I will be the way God intended me to be.