MATH and GOD

I was reading some stuff on Blaise Pascal and John Locke this morning. It shot me in quite a lovely trajectory. Here we go.

MATH IS EXTERNAL

Who came up with the idea that 2+2=4? Not you. Definitely not me. I'm going to roll the dice here. It probably wasn't Descartes. What about Euclid? Pythagoras? The ancient Egyptians? The point is that 2+2=4 is true outside of us. It is an external reality from you and me. There are branches of philosophy that would wrangle with what I mean, but the broad point is simple: Math is not of human manufacturing. It's existence was here before you and will be here after you. This, of course, leads to

MATH IS ETERNAL

In first grade you learn to count to 100. Maybe around third grade you learn to count to 1,000. This guy knows 22,000 decimal points of Pi [3.14]. You know, the unending number that can't be a real fraction. He said them on Pi Day a couple years ago. C'mon... For real... Pi Day? Yep. It's March 14. Get it? Anywho. Those 22,000 decimal points are not even getting him warmed up to the eternality of Pi. He hasn't even started to break a sweat. He's not even in the arithmetic on-deck circle. Numbers have no end. That is the nature, beauty, and confusion about math.

MATH IS RELATIONAL

Numbers call out to you for a relationship. Meaning, if you don't know numbers, how will you pay bills? How will you grocery shop? How will you sustain a job? You have to relate to math to make life happen. It even tells us the time of day, which in turn, organizes our whole schedule. And strangely enough, the more we give our self to precision in our dealings with numbers, the higher chance there is that we will be better a this thing called life.

Now that last sentence is almost ridiculous, but you get the point. The most important thing in all this is that math can't relate to you, but only you to it. It has no emotions, feelings, sentiments, or relational capacities.

But what if there was an external from us, eternally incomprehensible, and relational "thing" with which we could be involved? That would sure change how I went about life. It would even make all this numbers talk make more sense.

EPiSTEMOLOGY, JEWiSH SEX, and ETERNAL LiFE

I know that 2 + 2 = 4.

I know that South Carolina actually had a good snow this past winter.

I know that my wife is pregnant.

I know that Dennis Rodman and I have the same birthday.

What if you could know every fact that has ever been?

What if you knew every sports stat from every team and every player that has ever existed. You knew every touchdown, homerun, tripple-double, hole-in-one, and championship in history. Let's say that you know every war that has ever been fought and the victor in each battle. Let's even say that you knew the names of all of those lost in each battle. Perhaps you could list the birthdays of each president, dictator, ruler, and czar the world has ever seen.

Obviously I could go on forever. Bear with me.

Let's say that you knew all of these things. You would be a human computer. Your friends call you Google Thompson. You can spit out every factual reality possible. Do you then have real "knowledge"? Have you exhausted "knowledge"? Does the epistemological buck stop with you?

Not a chance.

There are several reasons why. FIRST, you may know all possible facts, but what about the motives, intentions, emotions, and ideas behind them? Does knowing that Roberto Clemente died with exactly 3000 hits mean that you can know how he felt? Doubtful. Who cares if you know that the Berlin Wall fell if you don't know how people thought about it? My simple purpose is this... Part of the essence of knowledge is that it is inexhaustible. This means that the essence of knowledge cannot be fact-knowing. Then what is real knowledge? Hmmm?

SECOND, because we are products of the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the Scientific Method we have come to think of "knowledge" as observable and tried actuality. This seems to operate under the assumption that objectivity and subjectivity can be divorced. Tis folly, my friends.

THIRD, Adam knew Eve; then came Cain. As is clear, this is far more than informed mindfulness. This is an experiential knowing. The Hebrew word for "know" is "yada." If you continue to trace this idea you will find that "knowing" has historically, theologically, and spiritually transcended awareness to experience, and transcended experience to relationship.

So, when Jesus says, "Depart from me. I never knew you" [Mt 7.23], He is not talking about being cognizant of a person's existence. He is talking about relationship. Or... "All those that God foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of Jesus" [Rom 8.29-30]. The point here is that real, right, and true "knowledge" is being intimately bound to someone. This is the source from which fact-knowing springs.

All of this makes Jesus' words in John 17 a little more poignant and fresh.

This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

God giving Jesus shows how He desires to be known [Jn 14.6, 6.44]. For me, this ripens the old Christian adage, "Know Him and make known."

the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity

It is philosophically elementary of me to say that there is a clear divide between the two. Saying that something is absolutely objective or subjective is the same as saying that you can absolutely scientifically prove that God does or does not exist. Neither are possible.

Further, I do not believe the two are diametrically opposed. All of history, all of personal experience, all of math, all of science, all of life - everything is a sweet combination of this pair, regardless of how narrow or broad you define them.

As far as how the objective relates to the subjective, I have found the following quite intriguing. 

The deeper someone goes into any field of study, the more knowledge concerning that field they acquire. Obviously, this warehouse of knowledge is more objective than subjective. However, when those individuals begin to apply or use that knowledge, it seems as though the appropriation and application of it becomes more subjective. 

Example - If you asked a college freshman English major what a participle was, they could tell you in perhaps 12 words or less. However, if you ask that same person 8-10 years later when they are completing their doctoral work on the use of adjectival participles in Shakespeare, they might begin their answer in a similar fashion. But... How they grasp the idea and employ the reality of "participle" will be drastically nuanced, and likely - far more fluid.

In my personal experience, the more I study the Bible, the more I read, the more knowledge I gain, the more I realize that there's more to know and the tougher it becomes for me to apply the existing knowledge I have. The greater the mass of the "objective" I attain, the more significant and fragile its "subjective" outworking becomes. I don't think this is merely a spiritual tension though.

A geologist will always become a better geologist if he keeps studying. But his becoming will never be only theoretical [mere study] or only functional [mere practice]. The marriage of these two - the theoretical and practical, the objective and the subjective - causes deeper pursuit of both.

The reason for this is that we are hard-wired for full fellowship without any partiality. We were not made to be befuddled by this seeming dichotomy. One day though, we will know fully and be fully known. There is no apparent contrast between objectivity and subjectivity in the forever flawless presence of God. "As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end" [Bob Marley] - redeemed man will be unhindered and be with God, like God, and for God... world without end.

who cares what the Bible says

Hopefully the title has made you keep reading. I heard John Piper say that one time. Of course, he then followed it up with, "It is what the Bible means that counts." I pretty much agree. I know that content and meaning will have a tight-knit relationship, but what we want is meaning, not mere regurgitation of content.

And for people who don't like John Piper, Hilary of Poitiers essentially said the same thing. "Scripture is not in the reading, but in the understanding."

While I give a hearty AMEN to both of these I also understand that they necessitate weighty philosophical and epistemological explanations, of which I am ready to give a rational defense. I've been helped here by Kevin J. Vanhoozer. Go read everything he has written. Don't swear by it all, but be provoked by his breadth of thinking.

KNOWiNG GOD & iSAiAH 45.5-6

Isaiah begins with the heavens and the earth testifying to the fact the YHWH's people don't know Him [1.3]. This is not a simple "knowing" as in how you know that 2+2=4. This is an experiential knowing. This the "Adam knew Eve" kind of knowing from Gen 4.1 [KJV, from the Hebrew yada]. This theme of "knowing" can be traced throughout the whole of Isaiah.

When YHWH speaks in Isaiah 45.5-6, there is a beautiful structure that accents the significance of this knowing.

This does not merely show the importance of this intimate kind of knowledge, but this text proves, by its structure, that this knowing is rooted in YHWH's character and exclusivity. 

Many who write theology books begin with proving the existence of God, the authority of the Scriptures, or some other foundational building block. But our good, dead buddy John Calvin began his theological opus ["The Institutes of Christian Religion"] with a chapter on knowing God. I think there is a beautiful distinction there. He began with relationship.

John Frame and Esther Meek would agree with him. Calvin said, "They that know God and know themselves cannot be proud." May it be so with us also as we pursue the kind of knowing that Israel seemed to so often lack.

EPiSTEMOLOGY 101

Esther Meek is genius in this book. Its flow and tangible illustrations provide her argument with substance. She asks Can we know God?, Can we know anything for sure?, and How can we know if we can know anything at all? She discusses how any kind of knowing is not static, but a process. Our subjective involvement in knowing does not necessarily determine the truths we know, but molds how we know, live, and think about them.