Skip to main content

God vs. Human Comparison - Caroline Tucker

Dark Night of the Soul is equally an intriguing and confusing text. It is probably confusing to me because I am not the best at initially understanding what is going on with no context. As I read, however, I was able to somewhat understand what is going on in this text. I was both intrigued but also dare I saw convicted. It was very enlightening and I look forward to thinking about the text and reading more of it. As I was reading, many sentences made me close the book and say “wow”, I am going to discuss one of those sentences. 

In book I chapter VII, St. John of the cross wrote “Thus they measure God by themselves and not themselves by God, acting quite contrarily to that which He Himself taught in the Gospel...” (18). I found this quote to be a great and convicting thought. I remember having multiple conversations in Sunday school discussing why God did something and how it does not make sense to us as humans, we always came back to the fact that God cannot be compared to us. We must compare ourselves to God. We cannot fathom the mind of God becuase we have a finite and constrained thought while God is not constrained at all and is infinite.  

P.s. I commented on Leanne’s and Jackson’s posts.

Comments

  1. It is indeed very difficult to fully understand God, dare I say impossible. As you mentioned, He is infinite while we are finite, and while we have limits, He has none. It gets confusing the more you try to understand it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It is ironic that we talked about this today in Philosophy class. Our human minds do not have the compacity to comprehend God since we are finite beings. I think that is a blessing, though. I think not knowing everything about God makes Christianity more interesting, and it gives surprises to look forward to in Heaven.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It is so easy to put God into a box. Both because we are finite and he is infinite but also because we sometimes just want him to follow our desires and wants. We can't wrap our heads around his nature because he is so much greater than us.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lovers of Wisdom, Not Power—Lily Caswell

In Book VIII of Plato’s Republic, Socrates talks about the possibility of having a well-governed city. However, he also talks about how that particular form of government is impossible to have. A well-governed city becomes a possibility only if you can discover a better way of life for your future rulers than holding office.” (Plato, p 215) Maybe his version of a better life was for those in office to not be lovers of power, since it would then become a fight among rival lovers. Socrates gets to the point that the only rulers who don’t love power are true philosophers. Philosophers are lovers of wisdom and knowledge and not power, ergo they are the perfect rulers. Absolute power corrupts and power corrupts absolutely, so I’m thinking that maybe the trick to being a good ruler is for you to be a philosophical person who loves wisdom and not power. I commented on Jamie’s and Isabelle’s posts.

How to Make a Clone - Clabo

I found books three and four to be very cringy. I mean, to me the idea of structurally producing good soldiers/guardians through heavy censorship is somewhat inhumane. I feel as if human beings should be allowed to experience every bit of knowledge they can at some point in their lives. To me, it seems as if the guardians are being guarded against information throughout their entire lives so they can solely fulfill the duties they were birthed into.  However, the influence and importance Plato places on poetry and music do make me wonder what it would be like if we had the same values as our military today. What if the United States military invested in the souls of its soldiers and placed within them emotional and intellectual values outside of what they have learned previously. Perhaps the military instills values and principles within soldiers to fulfill the same purpose as the guardians would in Plato's Republic and that is to only be that which the government wants you to be....

Dystopian Origins Uncovered ////// Isabelle Ferguson

  I think that ideas eventually run out of originality and circle back to the original idea. During this week's reading, many of Socrates’ suggestions for a place of perfection reminded me of some novels I’ve read depicting dystopian worlds. Disclaimer: There are spoilers ahead. You have been warned.        To begin, in  The  Giver  by Lois Lowry censorship is a major theme. The novel is centered around a boy who is receiving memories withheld from the population! The government in The Giver is especially careful to censor the memories that may cause strife, anger, fear, sadness, etc. In the adults, this society is cemented. So, the government is especially strict with the youth. Socrates talks about verses to “obliterate” to prevent the descriptions from doing “harm to our future warriors” for the better half of Book III (Plato, page 44). The warriors he speaks of are the youth. He goes on to list the multitude of verses that should be done ...