On Tue, 24 Oct 1995 12:10:28 -0500 you wrote:
DT>When some paleontologists maintain that the Bible does indeed put
>limits on our scholarship, and they assume that those limits must be
>fit into their conclusions, we will be on our way to better
>conclusions and better thinking on many origins problems.
BH>This may be a quibble, but I think it's important. It seems to me
>that the correct statement is that our human finiteness puts limits
>on our scholarship. The Bible tells us we are finite and reminds us
>that God's ways are higher than ours. But _is_ it specific enough
>about the exact nature of our limitations to be a definitive source
>of known constraints on our scholarship? I'm not so sure.
Agreed. We are limited not only by our finiteness but also our moral
blindness.
BH>It seems to me that we are in a sense in the same position as the
>inhabitants of Edwin A. Abott's _Flatland_ (you can get it on the web
>at http://wiretap.spies.com/ftp.items/Library/Classic/flatland.txt).
>There is a dimension or dimensions in which God and his agents act
>that we cannot see. But it's more than that: we cannot, in our
>natural mekeup, even conceive that such dimensions may exist. What
>we know of them is revealed to us by the Scriptures and by the Holy
>Spirit.
Thanks for this web page reference.
I am glad you mentioned Flatland. It seems to me to offee a real
insight into how God can transcend our space and time, yet interact
with it, as Houghton explains:
"The crucial step in the space-time model described in the last
chapter was the introduction of time as the fourth dimension. I want
to suggest that we can think about God's position and relation to the
universe as if he were present in an extra dimension. Let us see how
such a model can help us in thinking about God. To aid in pursuing
this model, we begin by trying to imagine life in a two-dimensional
world. In the 1880s, an Oxford mathematician, Edwin Abbott, wrote a
fascinating book entitled Flatland, in which he imagines a world
having only two dimensions. The inhabitants of the world are confined
to move on a plane, and indeed have no knowledge whatever of anything
outside that plane. They experience north-south and east-west but
cannot begin to conceive of up-down. For them the third dimension
does not exist.
Abbott, presumably because he was a mathematician, imagines the
two-dimensional world populated by beings whose outlines are
mathematical figures: straight lines, triangles, squares, pentagons
and so on to circles. One's class in Flatland society is determined
according to the number of sides one possesses....Abbott describes in
great detail how the different classes recognize and keep out of the
way of each other; in fact the book was written as a satire on class.
Towards the end of Abbott's book, a sphere from the three-dimensional
world of Spaceland appears, and attempts to explain to one of the
two-dimensional inhabitants of Flatland what it means to possess
another dimension and to be a sphere. The sphere passes through the
plane of Flatland several times, appearing first as a point followed
by a minute circle, a larger circle, a smaller circle again, and
finally disappearing - a process completely inexplicable and magical
to the Flatland inhabitants. The sphere then demonstrates that it can
see into the interior of Flatland houses, rooms and cupboards without
passing through the doors and windows - again utterly mysterious to
the Flatlanders. Finally, the incredulous Flatlander is taken out of
Flatland by the sphere from Spaceland and given a vision of the
three-dimensional world. However, on returning to Flatland, he is
completely unable, either through his attempts at descriptions or
through mathematical analogy, to persuade any of the other inhabit-
ants of Flatland to give any credence to his new-fangled ideas. To
them, everything in Flatland is complete, there is nothing they
perceive in their everyday life which cannot be described in
two-dimensional terms. His seeing the circle and then not seeing the
circle, and his conversation with this illusory being were clearly
hallucinations; things like that just did not happen in Flatland. To
imagine any other than a two-dimensional framework for their existence
seems completely unnecessary and impossible.
By way of analogy, let us imagine an extra dimension to the three of
space and one of time with which we are familiar. We can call it the
spiritual dimension which contains heaven, the dwelling of God and of
other spiritual beings. Can this analogy help us in thinking about
God and his relationship to the universe?
The sphere in Spaceland was normally outside Flatland yet could peer
into all parts of the inside of Flatland; all events in Flatland were
transparent to him. Further, he could enter and be present in
Flatland anywhere he pleased. In a similar way with the analogy of an
extra dimension, we can imagine God in the spiritual dimension being
outside the material universe yet being all-seeing and all-knowing
regarding events within it, and having the ability to be present
anywhere within it."
(Houghton J.T., "Does God Play Dice?", Inter-Varsity Press:
Leicester, 1988, p64,66).
Houghton goes on to relate this Flatland analogy to Jesus'
post-resurrection experiences:
"Take, for instance, the central point of the resurrection. The main
objections today arise from the feeling that an event so contrary to
normal experience as a dead body coming alive again in resurrection
requires far more than historical evidence for it to be accepted as
fact. People just do not rise from the dead and then appear and
disappear in different places...
But then, if Jesus really is God who appeared in a body, if he is God
breaking into human history, if he is the way we get to know the
greatest conceivable being, we look at the historical events in a
different light and ask a different kind of question. We stop asking,
'How can I accept such unusual events as fact (even though the
evidence for them may appear strong)?' and ask instead: 'Supposing
they are fact, do they make sense?'...
Let us go back to the two-dimensional world of Flatland and the
attempt of the creature from Spaceland to convey the existence of the
third dimension to the Flatland inhabitants. The Spaceland creature
not only demonstrated that he could see inside the Flatland houses and
the Flatland beings themselves and describe in detail what was going
on, but he could also appear at will, albeit in a two-dimensional
section, in any part of Flatland, and disappear at will. Jesus after
his resurrection also appeared and disappeared at will, demonstrating
that he was no longer subject to the same limitations of space as he
had been before. The resurrection of Jesus and his post- resurrection
appearances support his statements and his message, namely that there
is a spiritual dimension of fundamental importance which can be
discovered through him as 'the way and the truth and the life'."
(Houghton, p79)
God bless.
Stephen
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