Interesting late night thoughts are double-edged. On the one hand, I hate boredom, so the fact I can entertain myself is a blessing. But usually, I'm too lazy to get out of bed to write any of these thoughts down, and thinking about them usually deprives me of much needed sleep.
To give an example, I was thinking about the relation between time and the Trinity, topics I have been concentrating on for the past few months. Specifically, I was trying to think of a consistent set of theories from among what alternatives I am aware of. I don't really mean for the following to be a strict argument - more like a rare, real life anecdote. I'm in a funny mood, I guess.
"Subordination of the Son to the Father insofar as a divine nature is communicated to the former by the latter in eternal generation seems to be the best explanation for the Trinitarian issue of generic unity which avoids both tritheism and the collapsing of the persons... but if eternal generation is true, the Son is in some sense caused by the Father, so to distinguish Him from creatures it will be necessary to contrast creatures to divine persons... the most obvious way to do that would be by emphasizing the eternality of the latter... but then, since eternal generation would imply some sort of causation, the B-theory of time in which events are ordered in the direction of causation would seem to be precluded or at least in need of modification, as that would suggest the Son is not eternal... but if, on the contrary, something like William Lane Craig's time is true, while that may account for the eternality of the Son, it would mean that the thoughts of the omniscient divine persons change in accordance with irreducible tensed propositions to reflect the temporal "flow" of reality... but if the thoughts of the divine persons change, not only can't a strong view of immutability be maintained like Paul Helm would want, it would suggest a person cannot, as Gordon Clark thought, "be" what he thinks, for then the divine persons themselves would be continually changing due to their change in thoughts... so maybe Clark's metaphysic needs adjusting... or maybe immutability refers to the moral character or rational nature of the persons... ah, screw it, I'll forget all of this by morning."
Enough to keep anyone awake, huh? Good night folks.
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2 comments:
Hi Ryan,
This is off the topic, but is there a difference between the following two?
1. Omiscience by himself;
2. Knowing all propositions through communication of all knowledge from the one who is omiscience by himself.
Thanks,
Mark
I suppose there would be a difference in the manner according to which a self-existent person can be said to know all things, but there certainly wouldn't be a difference in quality or quantity of knowledge.
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