I'm reading a couple assigned books for my Religions class, and after reading the Hinduism portion of the readings, I've had a couple of questions..
It occurs to me that language is a huge barrier for describing the divine and God, in the case of Hinduism: Brahman (IIRC). I can't help but feel extremely frustrated the God and Divinity are described almost always as paradoxes and contradictory language. Descriptions that paint God as 'being' and 'not being,' make me want to pull my hair out. I'm trying to give these readings a fair shake, but I can't help but feel that these descriptions have less to do with a real attempt to know God and are only meant to sound mystical and 'deep' to the layperson that happens to be reading.
So do you feel God/Divinity truly escapes our ability to describe or do people only imagine that there is something they can't describe. It makes more sense to me if they were trying to describe a completely imaginary notion rather than something real (and unreal)...
That's hard for me to say as I don't believe in God in the first place, so I can't say whether he escapes our ability to describe or not.
A passage says one can go throughout the universe and indicate everything which God is not, and somehow that is supposed to be a good description of what God is...
That does seem a dreadful cop-out. I don't know much about Hinduism so I can't really comment on that aspect of the tradition. I can say that Christian apophatic theology doesn't normally go this far. The grand-daddy of Christian apophaticism is Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and I'd recommend his
Mystical Theology (which is just a few pages long) as a summary of his views. The interesting thing with him is that he combines apophaticism with cataphatism (that is, the description of God in more positive terms). He thinks that the way of denial ultimately supersedes the way of affirmation, but not all at once. That is, all statements of what God is like ultimately have to be rejected; but some are rejected first because they are
more untrue. For example, he says it more untrue to say that God is a stone than it is to say that he is good. So we reject "God is a stone" while affirming "God is good". Eventually, however, we must realise that even "God is good" - while worthier of God than "God is a stone" - is also untrue, and that God transcends goodness; he just doesn't transcend it as much, or as obviously, as he transcends stoniness. And Pseudo-Dionysius says that ultimately ultimately we must realise that God transcends denials as well; so for any X, "God is X" is false, but "God is not X" is false as well.
So that's an example of extreme apophaticism - including the doctrine of double denial - but which nevertheless doesn't just throw up its hands and say that for any X God isn't that, because it includes a way of saying that there are some properties which it is less untrue to ascribe to God than others.
Is this characteristic unique to God/Divinity, or are there other indescribable things that actually exist?
Probably. If souls exist, in the sense of a spiritual part of a person that survives death, they seem pretty much indescribable (they're always described as
unlike the body). More plausibly, most of the entities studied by quantum physics are indescribable too, or at least describable only in paradoxical and contradictory ways, which comes down to the same thing.
Moving beyond the idea that closeness to the divine is an emotion, to taking that emotion as evidence of a higher being is really making me frustrated.
That seems a quite different issue. Yes, I agree that such emotion doesn't seem very evidentially strong. But is it just
emotion that's being appealed to, or something stronger, such as apparent perception? There again the evidential value may be questionable, at least if it's someone else's apparent perception that's being reported to you. But one's own apparent perceptions are much harder to ignore, even if your reason tells you to do so. In which case, a strong feeling of God's presence may be poor evidence of his presence, looked at dispassionately, but nevertheless may still make it very hard for you
not to believe in his presence.
@Plotinus- Thank you for your answers! (I would have posted this beforehand, and I did read them before this, but I felt it would be spamming the thread to just post that.)
No, it's good to know that the comments have been noticed.
First of all, Pelagius believed that man could be sinless, denied original sin, and said that some men were perfect, is this correct?
That is half right. Pelagius thought that it's possible to live a sinless life. This was based, in part, on Matthew 5:20, where Jesus exhorts his followers to "be perfect". Pelagius pointed out that if this is a serious ethical injunction then it must be possible for us to be perfect, since God can't command us to do something that we're not capable of. (As far as I know, this is the first appearance of the principle that "ought implies can", that is, that you can't be morally obliged to do something that's not within your power. This is a fundamental principle to modern ethics and one that is often attributed to Kant, but Pelagius appeals to it quite explicitly.)
There's an interesting letter entitled
On the possibility of not sinning, which was probably written not by Pelagius but by one of his followers at the time (i.e. the early fifth century), which sets out the argument nicely:
anonymous said:
Is there anyone so thoughtless, so unrighteous, so totally ignorant of equity, as to dare to order a servant or any of his subjects to do what he knows to be beyond his capability? For instance, will any man instruct his servant to complete in one day a journey which takes four days or despatch him to swim across the waves of the wide sea rather than to sail over them or to climb impassible and inaccessible mountains with slippery peaks or to do anything else beyond his natural capabilities? If he presumed to give such an instruction, who would not think him not only unfair but mad as well, seeing him impose upon a man instructions which his own natural powers could by no means carry out? And if such a judgement can justifiably be made of a man of this kind, I leave it to your common sense to decide what men would think of a God whom they suppose to have given them an order which is beyond their natural capabilities.
The author goes on to observe that the main reason people object to this teaching is that it removes the excuse for sin:
anonymous said:
But someone will say, "Is it then possible for a man not to sin?" Such a claim is indeed a hard one and a bitter pill for sinners to swallow; it pains the ears of all who desire to live unrighteously. Who will find it easy now to fulfil the demands of righteousness, when there are some who find it hard even to listen to them? Or how is a man to undertake with equanimity the works which are required, when the teaching underlying them sounds so unpleasant? Why do we any longer ask whether a thing is possible, when it is considered to be so unusual and contrary to nature that men cannot even listen to it? When will the bloodthirsty and cruel gladly accept such a claim? When will the greedy and lustful cease to be terrified by it? When will the extravagant and the mean bear it with equanimity? To sum all this up briefly: When will a man guilty of any crime or sin accept with a tranquil mind that his wickedness is a product of his own will, not of necessity, and allow what he now strives to attribute to nature to be ascribed to his own free choice? It affords endless comfort to transgressors of the divine law if they are able to believe that their failure to do something is due to inability rather than disinclination, since they understand from their natural wisdom that no one can be judged for failing to do the impossible and that what is justifiable on grounds of impossibility is either a small sin or none at all.
He then introduces a new argument: if it's impossible for us to live without sin, then not only are our sins not our fault, but they must be God's, since he made us the way we are:
anonymous said:
If you object to this, saying, "A man cannot by any means be without sin", then consider first whether that which is such that a man cannot be without it ought to be described as "sin" at all; for everything which cannot be avoided is now put down to nature but it is impious to say that sin is inherent in nature, because in this way the author of nature is being judged at fault. To say that a man cannot be without sin is like saying that a man cannot live without food or drink or sleep or other such things without which our human state cannot exist. But if that is what we must hold, how can it be proper to call sin by that name if, like other natural things, it cannot be avoided, since all sin is to be attributed to the free choice of the will, not the defects of nature?
The climax of the argument follows:
anonymous said:
But, to make the point still more plainly, you say that a man cannot be without sin. I ask first whether he was commanded to be without sin or was not so commanded. "I believe that he was," you reply. Why then was he so commanded, if it was quite impossible for him to carry out the command? You have to accept one of these alternatives, either that the command was not given, seeing that it cannot be carried out, or that it can be carried out, because it was commanded, since, as we have said earlier, God would never have commanded the impossible. But, to make it absolutely clear that the command was given, let us make use of examples from the holy law. It is written: You shall be holy, for I, the Lord you God, am holy (Lev. 19:2). And in the gospel our Saviour says: You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt. 5:48). And the blessed apostle Paul says: Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, as the children of God are without blemish (Phil. 2:14,15). And elsewhere: And you, who once were estranged and hostile to his mind, doing evil deeds, but have now been reconciled to him in the body of his flesh by his death, present yourselves as holy and blameless and irreproachable before him (Col. 1:21,22).
Now that seems to me to be a very powerful argument.
On original sin, Pelagius did not deny it. He just denied a particular understanding of what it was. You must understand that "original sin" is not a particular doctrine but just a phrase (a non-biblical one at that), and there are different understandings of what it means. When Pelagius was around, there was no standard understanding of it. Some people believed that it meant a sort of tendency to perform sin, which all human beings experience as a desire which may be resisted or not. Others, however, believed it was something stronger than that. Pelagius believed that original sin is not something that is inherited from one's parents - i.e. it is not something that is part of our nature, as other inherited traits are - but it exists at the purely social level. If you live in an environment where lots of people are sinning, where sin is common and normal and even praised, you will experience a strong desire to sin. That desire can be resisted, however, because it comes from outside. Pelagius thought that when Adam and Eve sinned, that set up a bad example to the people who came after them. Just as the existence of one rebel inspires others to rebel as well, so too Adam's example caused his descendants to imitate him, and so things got worse and worse. However, Pelagius insists that all those people always had the choice of whether to imitate Adam or not, and so do we. That means that although original sin continues to exert a strong pressure upon us, we always have the power to resist that pressure. Most people choose not to do so, of course, but so much the worse for them.
So Pelagius himself explains Romans 5:12-13 in this way:
Pelagius said:
"Therefore, just as through one person sin came into the world, and through sin death." By example or by pattern. Just as through Adam sin came at a time when it did not yet exist, so in the same way through Christ righteousness was recovered at a time when it survived in almost no one... "And so death passed on to all people, in that all sinned." As long as they sin in the same way, they likewise die. For death did not pass on to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, concerning whom the Lord says: "Truly they are all living" [Luke 20:38]. But here he says all are dead because in a multitude of sinners no exception is made for a few righteous.
The concept of original sin as something that is literally inherited in a biological or pseudo-biological way - rather than existing at the social level, as Pelagius thought - comes under powerful attack. Pelagius gives the following arguments against it (which he phrases as if he were reporting other people's views):
Pelagius said:
But those who oppose the transmission of sin try to assail it as follows: "If Adam's sin," they say, "harmed even those who were not sinners, then Christ's righteousness helps even those who are not believers. For [Paul] says that in like manner, or rather to an even greater degree are people saved through the one than had previously perished through the other." Secondly, they say: "If baptism washes away that ancient sin, those who have been born of two baptized parents should not have this sin, for they could not have passed on to their children what they themselves in no wise possessed." Besides, if the soul does not exist by transmission, but the flesh alone [i.e. if your soul does not come from your parents' souls, but is created directly by God], then only the flesh carries the transmission of sin and it alone deserves punishment." Thus, declaring it to be unjust that a soul which is born today, not from the lump of Adam, bears so ancient a sin belonging to another, they say that on no account should it be granted that God, who forgives a person his own sins, imputes to him another's.
These are all excellent arguments, in my view, and Augustine, who was Pelagius' principal antagonist, was unable to produce good answers to them.
It's often said that Pelagius denied original sin and divine grace, while upholding human freedom, while Augustine denied human freedom while upholding original sin and divine grace. But that's not true. Both of them believed in all of those things, but they defined them differently. Of course, as far as Pelagius was concerned Augustine's understanding of human freedom was deficient, while Augustine thought that Pelagius' understanding of original sin and divine grace was deficient.
As for whether some people are perfect, yes, Pelagius and his followers thought that only those people who (after baptism) have lived perfect lives will be saved. Obviously they didn't think that many people fall into this category, but some do.
And on that note, how did he explain Romans 3:23 (For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.)
Pelagius interprets this as referring to pre-baptismal sin. He doesn't think that anyone has lived a perfect life from the cradle to the grave (other than Jesus, of course). Rather, everyone sins (they are not forced to do so by original sin, but as it happens, everyone chooses to sin). Baptism removes the guilt of this sin. After baptism, we are expected to live perfectly as God commands.
Pelagius comments on Romans 3:21:24:
Pelagius said:
Through sin we have been sold to death - as Isaiah says: "You were sold by your sins" - but Christ, who did not sin, conquered death (Isa. 50:1). For we were all condemned to death, to which he handed himself over, though it was not his due, so that he might redeem us with his blood. This is why the prophet prophesied: "You were sold for nothing, and without money you will be redeemed" (Isa. 52:3). That is, because you received nothing for yourselves, and have to be redeemed with Christ's blood. At the same time it should be noted that he did not buy us, but bought us back, because previously we were his by nature, although we were alienated from him by our transgressions. If we stop sinning, then indeed will our redemption be profitable.
(The passages from Pelagius' commentary on Romans here and in my previous post are taken from
Pelagius's commentary on St Paul's epistle to the Romans, ed. Theodore de Bruyn, Oxford: Clarendon 1993. And the passages from the Pelagian letter quoted earlier are from
Pelagius: life and letters by B.R. Rees, Rochester, NY: Boydell.)
