Humor

Well, like Christopher, I am trying to blog the entire month of December, so although I do not have enough energy to post much, I can at least provide some humor:

What do they call Santa's helpers?
Subordinate Clauses

What do you call Santa Clause after he's fallen into a fireplace?
Krisp Kringle

Which of Santa's reindeers needs to mind his manners the most?
“Rude”olph

Where do Santa's reindeers like to stop for lunch?
Deery Queen

What do you call the fear of getting stuck while sliding down a
chimney?
Santa Claus-trophbia

What do you call a bunch of grandmasters of chess bragging about
their games in a hotel lobby?
Chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.

How do sheep in Mexico say Merry Christmas?
Fleece Navidad

What do you get when you cross an archer with a gift-wrapper?
Ribbonhood

Why was Santa's little helper depressed?
Because he had low elf esteem.

How do canines in Mexico say Merry Christmas?
Fleas Navidog.

Merry Second Week of Advent!

Tired.

I've just spent the evening considering Duns Scotus and William Ockham. Phew. I am tired.

Shadows of the Past

Tonight, I walked out of a classroom after an actual class at Lindenwood for the last time. Next week is finals — I only have two normal finals, along with one take home final I am working on and one final project I already turned in — and then I will be completely done. After four and a half years, I will no longer spend nine months of the year walking around LU's lovely little campus.

I can't say I'm anxious. I am ready to finish up in many senses, but in some ways, the core environment of LU has been a tranquil setting among the loss of grandparents, several major illnesses concerning my dad, and other matters. Not everything out of LU has been happy, but there have been lots of good memories.

Memories. Shadows of the past that seem to come to mind. Certain memories, particularly from Fall 2004, continue to come back to mind as they did earlier this fall when I did a little multipart narrative. In away it will be nice to move on to something new and fresh, but sometimes it is nice to be able to dwell in the past a little. But, this point I'm at now is good to move beyond. Two years ago would probably have been the high point of my time at Lindenwood, whereas now, things are just winding down.

Life moves on and soon I will be done.

Late Night Haiku XIX

LII. Silence walks softly
And lurks behind my mind's eye,
Careful! No more — no.

LIII. Tick the clock tocks soft,
And time tick rolls onward tock,
And I tick watch tock.

LIV. The snow melts slowly,
Old remnants of lighter times,
Flows down the hill now.

Possible Worlds and God

OK, so it is beyond the level of logic I know how to work with, but supposedly Alvin Plantinga has a reworking of the ontological argument for the existence of God that uses what is known as “S5” modal logic. While I don't know how to do S5, I think I understand the basic principle, which is that given an infinite number of possible worlds with all possible combinations of states existing, God must be necessary in at least one of them. And if a necessary being exists in one world, He must exist in all worlds.

The interesting thing that strikes me (though I don't know if it would work) is that it seems like the opposite must also be true: there must be at least one possible world where God does not exist (according to Plantinga's initial premise). Thus, we would end up with one possible world in which God must necessarily exist and not exist simultaneously.

There's a mind boggling thought. I tend to think using possible worlds to theorize is only questionable useful, but it is interesting.

No End to Studying God

Here's a little appetizer from Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics that I found poignant tonight:

“We now emphasise two further biblical attributes [“the Patience and Wisdom of God”] of God, both individually and in their interconnexion. We must try to understand them as expressions of the perfection of His love. As we do so we are again reminded of the fact that all further consideration of the divine attributes can but move in a circle around the one but infinitely rich being of God whose simplicity is abundance itself an whose abundance is simplicity itself. We are not speaking of a new objection but allowing the one object, God to speak further of Himself. We are continuing to contemplate the love of God and therefore God Himself as the One who loves in freedom. What end can there be to this development? We are drawing upon the ocean. We are therefore faced by a task to which there is no end.” (2.1 406)

Opening the Open Door

So, as I predicted, I broke down and purchased Evanescence's new CD, the Open Door. I was doing some Christmas shopping on Amazon.com, and they had new releases for $7.99 — how could I resist?

So far I like it. In an odd way, it seems more upbeat than their previous works (relatively speaking, as you will understand if you know Evanescence). I decided not to listen to the whole CD in one sitting, so listened to the first four songs. I had already heard “Call Me When You're Sober” on XM Flight 26, right after the single for it came out in August or September, so there weren't any surprises there, but the songs around it were very well developed. Like Fallen, the CD has a very connected, polished sound that avoids the feeling that certain key songs were meant for single status and everything else was left in rough form.

White Christmas

In recognition of us now being in the month of December and the fact that there is plenty of white stuff out on the lawn, I figured a little rendition of “White Christmas” would be fitting. And, with that in mind, what could be better than one that comes straight from Santa and his reindeer?

Aquinas and the Simplicity of God

Mark asks,

With respect, and if I have the right guy, that should be Saint Thomas Aquinas. And what do you mean by God’s simplicity? From an engineering perspective, God is as complicated as it gets. Heck he created everything we hear, see and feel and it all works perfectly. There is nothing simple about that.

Note: I'm going to give the long answer first. If that bogs anyone down, you'll find my own, simpler two cents, probably much more Barthian than the top part, below.

To the first point, yes, that would be one and the same. Being a Protestant, I often favor dropping the “saint” designation, although I will use it at times (I don't reject the bestowing of sainthood on Aquinas or others so much as support the sense that all believers are saints). For some reason I find it more natural to refer to Augustine as “St. Augustine” than I do Thomas Aquinas as “St. Thomas Aquinas.” I'm not sure why, I guess because he can't just be referred to as “St. Thomas.” “St. Augustine Hippo” wouldn't be much better, so Augustine is lucky that he had a more unique name. Really, though, I think part of it is that one can have a general theological discussion without any presumptions when talking about “Thomas Aquinas,” but not even the name will be agreeable to all if you use “St. Thomas Aquinas.” Interestingly, Aquinas is often referred to as just “Thomas” in the field of theology, maybe because one comes to feel as if he is an old friend over time.

At any rate, Thomas — there I go using that reference to him — makes it his first key point in Summa Theologica about the nature of God, other than that God can be demonstrated to exist, that God is simple. This follows on St. Augustine and St. Anselm, and agrees with Angelic Doctor's friend, St. Bonaventure, although more exactly, it seems to be a doctrine whose influence stretches back to Plato. Aquinas uses this doctrine to define first and foremost what God is not (complex) and thus set the stage for the rest of his discussion on God (Aquinas is nothing of not methodical and perfectly rational — hence my quibble with Francis Shaeffer a few weeks ago).

What simple means here is that an object has no smaller parts. For instance, I am made up of many physical parts and metaphysical parts that aren't essential to humanness, they are “accidents” (unnecessary). Anything that makes me me is not necessary for me being a human, only for making me Tim Butler. Moreover, even essential parts of my humanness come merely from my “participation” in humanness and not my being “human,” full stop, for you are a human too. God, on the other hand, is necessarily as He is (unchanging and perfect) and does not participate in things such as goodness, love, mercy, etc., but rather is those things. As the Bible says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8).

Following the Thomistic-Aristotelean viewpoint, when I say John is good, but Susan is better and Mark is best, I am defining the characteristic of goodness based on the “benchmark” of goodness, that is, God. The emphasis here is that when I say that John is good, that means part of his nature is goodness, but when I say God is good, I mean really that God is God (or, as Barth would say, “God is freely being Himself”) — His entire nature simply is Him. God can't be less than any of those things, because when we isolate the “attributes” of God, we are really just speaking in terms humans can understand by analogy, in reality, God's attributes are all merely one divine nature.

Does that help? I can try to explain more — I'm not really doing Aquinas much justice. For anyone interested, the appropriate part of the Summa is 1.3

My Simple Two Cents: God is freely Himself so we can merely say God is God. However, when I talk about anything else in the world, I essentially spend my time defining what that thing is not. I am using a keyboard, which means I am not using a toaster. Moreover, as everything in this world is corrupt and unable to follow its own nature, we often talk in terms of what a thing is suppose to be and what it actually is. I need to be talked about in attributes, because I do not live up to the ideal of perfect humanness because of my fallen nature (so we talk in terms of defining which parts of God's nature I am suppose to be like but am not). Moreover, even if I did live up to God's plan for a human, I'd still not encompass all good things, so I'd still need to be attributed as being “human” (which really is a limiter saying which parts of God's nature I am not even suppose to be).

I think that's a fair explanation of the gist of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS). I'll probably post the paper I am writing on the subject, perhaps broken into smaller bits within the not too distant future.

Apropos to the Wet Snow

Gently falling now,
The snow glistens in the yard,
All is clean for now.

The sleet and freezing rain started at 8:15 this morning (Thursday) and is continuing even now into Friday morning. We had some “thunder snow,” lots of freezing rain, some normal rain to melt everything together into bigger hunks of ice, and now more freezing rain. Supposedly, next up is some light fluffy snow. The amount of ice (several inches) is really quite amazing in and of itself. I'm glad I don't need to be anywhere for the next few days.