The final and correct interpretation of John 1.1

by Hellrider 79 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Hellrider

  JT:

  René Descartes was 180 degrees off when he said "I think, therefore I am". He was completely ignoring the most intimate and profound foundation that must first exist before anything including thought can arise: Conscious-awarness.

  Hm, I disagree with you too, here. Descartes point is self-awareness as the premiss necessary to do any kind of thought at all. amd a premiss for being able to say that one can "know" anything at all. His point is, without being able to constitute the fact that "I think" first, then nothing could come after. Without the thought, nothing would be certain for this person, not even existence! Of course,one could argue that a brain-dead person, lying in a respirator, still lives, but Descartes would probably ask: "Does this person know that he is alive? Is he able to establish the fact/observe that he can think?" Descartes wasn`t 180 degrees off on this issue, but he sure was 360 degrees off in the conclusion he makes, his belief that this one certain fact could be the basis for saying that God exists. As far as I know, noone has ever really been able to make a good counterargument against Descartes on cogito ergo sum. Which is, of course, what makes him one of the top philosophers in history. Nothing else of what he spewed out was unforgettable.

  It would have been closer to the truth, had he said "I am, therefore I think."

  But that would mean that all mankind could ever hope for, was "metaphysical speculation": This would mean that the basis for mans understanding would include some kind of metaphysical speculation, which is exactly what Descartes is trying to avoid. The sentence "I am, therefore I think" would mean trying to base an a posteriori fact on an priori belief, in stead of the other way around, and this results in metaphysical speculation. This is exactly what Descartes is trying to avoid. Descartes interest lies in "what can we know for certain", and then, to go from there, with this "what can we know for certain" as the basis for human understanding, and, in fact, the only basis man could ever hope of reaching. I believe Descartes is right on the spot here. It`s what he does form here, that is horribly wrong.
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  Golf

  Hellrider, you said, "There is no ME without my thoughts (words)!! have you ever come across the word, I could be or am "thoughtless?"
  
  
  Golf
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  Leolaia

  Narkissos....It seems tho that the main similarities between 1 John and John are confined to the Prologue and the Farewell Discourses, two redacted portions of the Fourth Gospel. I agree that the author knew the gospel as a whole, but why was he so fond of those two sections?

  You're right about the syntactic environments, Smalley does compare across predicate and non-predicate nouns so that pretty much destroys his otherwise attractive hypothesis (i.e. the presence of the definite article is not theologically meaningful in a contrastive way but simply represents a different syntactic environment). Still, it is interesting that the use of predicate nouns in a likely qualitative way is done for both God and the Word (comparing "the Word was God" to "God is love", "God is spirit", "God is light"), so that if the qualitative sense is meaningful in any theological way, then this meaning would apply to both the Word and God.
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  Leolaia

  It would have been closer to the truth, had he said "I am, therefore I think."

  Perhaps, but Descartes was not trying to prove cognition, he was trying to prove existence. He posits cognition and existence as presuppositions (#1, 2 below) of the claim he was trying to prove, i.e.

  1. Cognition is an activity that requires a thinking subject

  2. Subjects must exist to perform the activity

  3. I (ego) perform the activity of cognition

  4. Ergo, I am a thinking subject (= I am) (3 + 1)

  5. Ergo, I exist (4 + 2)

  The inferrence "I am, therefore I think" is not supported by this logic because it does not address the possibility of existence without cognition. Such a claim would require every thing that exists to be a thinking subject.
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  Narkissos

  Leolaia,

  It seems tho that the main similarities between 1 John and John are confined to the Prologue and the Farewell Discourses, two redacted portions of the Fourth Gospel.

  As you said, "main," not exclusive; cf. 1 Jn 2:11 // GJ 12:35; 2:15 // GJ 5:42; 3:8 // GJ 8:44; 3:14 // GJ 5:24; 3:16 // GJ 10:11,15; 4:9 // GJ 3:16f; 5:6 // GJ 19:34; 5:9f // GJ 5:32ff.

  why was he so fond of those two sections?

  This seems logical enough to me if they reflect intermediate stages in Johannine thought. Otoh, the differences between the later layers of the Gospel and the epistle (as those I pointed out earlier in the comparison of the Prologue and 1 John 1:1ff) do not favor a common authorship (of course it doesn't rule it out).

  Still, it is interesting that the use of predicate nouns in a likely qualitative way is done for both God and the Word (comparing "the Word was God" to "God is love", "God is spirit", "God is light"), so that if the qualitative sense is meaningful in any theological way, then this meaning would apply to both the Word and God.

  Agreed. And I tend to think it might suggest a unusually impersonal meaning of theos as predicate in this specific case (1:1).

  As to the side question raised by Hellrider on Proverbs 8, the (feminine) personified Wisdom which appears here (probably with some influence of the Egyptian Ma'at) will be found later in Sirach and Baruch (in a proto-pharisaic exclusivistic understanding which identifies her to the Torah) and in the Hellenistic Wisdom of Solomon (with a more universalistic ring, as in Proverbs). It will be included (with an important change of gender, from feminine to masculine) in Philo's logos speculations which are the main basis for the logos of John and Hebrews. On the other hand, the feminine personification of Wisdom still appears in the NT, but it is not a direct christological ingredient. This is especially the case in Luke (7:35; 11:49), which lacks any concept of Jesus' pre-existence.
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  JamesThomas

  Narkissos:

  I would rather suggest that "our true Identity" is what we ultimately cannot miss.

  I agree, when the story ends, when the thinking person we all cherish and believe is the beginning and end of our identity dies, there remains That, our true Identity, which was missed, but no longer. In the mean time we suffer greatly and feel separate, broken and isolated from each-other, and feel vindicated in killing, raping, war, and an endless list of mans inhumanities to man and nature. Perhaps there is a time to be a "commando". A time to mention that we are far more than what we believe and think, ourselves to be.

  Incidentally, this is just what Descartes meant. The ergo doesn't express a factual, but a cognitive causality: "From the fact I think I know that I am" (= "I am not a sensorial illusion"); in factual causality it implies: "I must first be in order to think."

  Then, I agree. But it sounds though that he is placing thinking first as he gives major credence to it in his statement. It seems he is placing all his marbles in the conceptual thought matrix of an intellectualized interpreted self (the one which dies as mentioned above) which is only a made-up character within being.

  Believe it or not I do not "discount" the "nothing" you are speaking of, instead I take it very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that I am quite wary of sneakingly reintroducing capitalised words and concepts like "Divine," "Source," "Being" and "Awareness" into it.

  It seems I worded my post as a personal attack on you. It was not, and I am glad you take it seriously and did not mean to infer you didn't. Please accept my apology.

  I capitalize because I am attempting (with great difficulty) to point to something we all share, and I use the words I feel may help people. Is it "sneaky"? I honestly didn't know.

  j
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  Ianone

  John 8:58 "Verily I say unto you, before Abraham was I AM." I don't believe in the OT God? Poppycock! Jesus is the God of the Old Testament whom Moses and the prophets spoke of.
  Who did Moses write about? The OT God?
  John 5:46 For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me.
  Is Jesus not the I AM who spoke to Abraham, Moses, and the Prophets?
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  Hellrider

  Ianone:

  Ok: Your claim is that there is no Trinity. There is one God, and his name is Jesus Christ. And if I understand you correct, in the OT his name is yhwh. So basically, yhwh just changed his name to Jesus Christ. In the OT, he was the God of the Israelites, in the NT, he is the God for all who are willing to accept him as God. Ok, I understand what you mean. But this is so different from the view both I hold, and the view christians in general, hold, that a discussion like this should be kept to its own thread, not in this thread about John 1,1. All I did in my post, was to clearify that I started this thread in defense of the Trinity-doctrine, a doctrine you reject. I just wanted to specify that, so that noone would get the misconception that I agree with you in you anti-trinitarian beliefs. But over to something different, something which I find much more serious than this discussion, is that you call me a:

  Poppycock!

  Now, I can`t honestly say that I know what a "poppycock" is, but I can assure you that if we`re talking "cock" here, I can assure you that I`m no "puppy", more like a fullgrown, slightly aggressive Bull Mastiff.

  Just so we`re clear on that.
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  Ianone

  Hellrider, Poppycock is an expression like, bullocks. You have ignored addressing the scriptures where Jesus identifies Himself as the I AM, the OT God. I do not believe in the mystical tetragrammatron, YHWH, of the Kabbalah, of which the JWs get their JEHOVAH calculation. Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh ( I AM THAT I AM) was what God called Himself in the OT. It is not some mystical secret name, like the Kabbalists and Talmudists would have us believe. It is open to everyone and shows that God is self existent.
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  Narkissos

  This thread is getting complex...

  JamesThomas,

  Thank you for your kind response. Sorry if my post sounded somewhat aggressive: it was aggressive in a sense, but it was not directed against you (neither against the unbounded "You" nor against the finished "you" whom I deeply appreciate and respect), rather it expressed a growing frustration at a systematic "anti-conceptual" attitude as I perceive it. (After all, this is not that off-topic in a thread on logos). And I guess I had to express it at least once.

  I think we deeply differ in the appraisal of language and culture. True, it is a highly ambiguous inheritance (both Mozart and Hitler are part of it) but I don't think we can dispense with it altogether and drown human history and culture into "just being". More speculatively, I tend not to identify "awareness" and "being," but to situate awareness on the border line between the "real world" and the human "world of symbols". A line which is really, not apparently, "nothing". Perhaps this will help both of us to understand where we -- peacefully -- disagree.

  I capitalize because I am attempting (with great difficulty) to point to something we all share, and I use the words I feel may help people. Is it "sneaky"? I honestly didn't know.

  Sorry, I expressed myself poorly. What is "sneaky" imo is the words themselves, which tend to reintroduce the metaphysical, transcendental "God" they apparently deny, under another form -- and the capitals are just a symptom of that. Of course this is not inconsistent with your approach of "being," which may aptly be termed "divine". On the other hand I think it is fatal to mine.