From: exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: GOD is EXISTENCE
Date: 28 Sep 92 16:17:05 GMT
Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Inc.
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In article <1992Sep28.093515.1@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi> hporopudas@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi writes:
>From: hporopudas@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi
>Subject: Re: GOD is EXISTENCE
>Date: 28 Sep 92 07:35:15 GMT


>In article <1992Sep26.215440.25625@u.washington.edu>,
>sieferme@milton.u.washington.edu (Eric Sieferman) writes:
>> In article <1992Sep25.154002.1@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi>
>hporopudas@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi writes:
>>>
>>> Hi !
>>>
>>>
>>> If God is 'Existence' as is defined in the Holy Bible
>>> (in 2nd Moses 3:14-15 and in gospel of Johannes 8:28-29),
>>> then who dares to assert that God does not exist. ?
>>>
>>>         Hannu.
>>>
>>
>> Me.
>>
>> Next question?
>>
>>
>> --
>> | Eric Sieferman            |    sieferme@u.washington.edu          |
>> | U. of W., M.C.I.S.        |    (206) 685-3104                     |


> Don't take the trouble, you asserted just that you yourself does not exist.

>          Hannu.

Hey, let's be economical. No use giving Hannu a lesson in first order 
predicate logic when we can make an argument right on his own biblical turf.
 
I begin by pointing out that biblical scholars today do not interpret "I AM 
WHO AM" = "JEHOVAH" to mean "I AM HE WHO EXISTS", or "I am he who has 
existence as his essential nature."  This has been the common interpretation 
by theologians anxious to sustain the traditional doctrine of medieval 
theology that God is ens reliassimum, "Being Itself", a doctrine which rests 
on the more basic Aristotelian idea that God's being must be devoid of 
incomplete realization ['purus actus'] and becoming, and goes back to 
Augustine's platonization of christianity, and perhaps even earlier to Philo 
of Alexandria's similar platonizing of the hebrew scriptures long before. It 
was Plato who defined eternity as that which does not become, for nothing 
that is in a state of becoming, he argued, ever *is*; it never fully 
"exists".  This idea was passed down to the schoolman through Boethius in 
medieval theology and philosophy and entered the contemporary religious 
thought-world of Protestant and Catholic with the status of an 
unquestionable axiom of western religion. 

Not only has this notion of God's being timeless and Being Itself come in 
for trenchant criticism among contemporary analytic philosophers of 
religion, such as A. Kenny and W. Rowe, and many others, but modern 
biblicists themselves have shown that there is no scriptural support for 
this conception of the Hebrew or Christian god; it is an accretion of 
the hellenizers. The passage Hannu quotes here is about the only one ever 
adduced in support of it, yet it is commonly agreed among theologians to be 
one of the most obscure passages in the Bible.  Biblical scholars now 
render 'Jehovah' to mean 'The Eternal One', and the "I AM" used in Exodus is 
as meaning the same.  Throughout the bible, god is spoken of as having 
neither beginning nor end in time, but never as trascending temporality or 
becoming altogether, and certainly this god is not spoken of in Tillichian 
manner as 'being itself.'

So, the answer to Hannu is [oddly enough]: Read your bible! 


Cullman, Christ and Time.
G.D. Yarnold, The Moving Image (London, 1966)
S.Clarke, Sermons, 17th ed., (London, 1746)
A.N. Prior, Papers on Time and Tense (Oxford 1968); Past, Present, and
Future (Oxford, 1967).

The are the only ones I can readily think of.  Any one interested in 
following up on the recent work in biblical scholarship, should e-mail
me for further references, since haven't looked at them for some time.  
  
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