Epistemology: Miracles

In the Old Testament mystical epistemology, God rules all Creation. He works in Creation, could participate in it if He chose, but is certainly rooted in His Being outside of Creation.

Thus, any “sign” from God could be no more than a natural process, well understood by today’s scientists, yet it would be the context of this event which speaks of God and His character. The whole point behind the Covenants of Noah and Moses was tying human behavior to natural and political factors outside of human control. A run of good weather was a sign from God, as was a series of natural disasters. But some of those signs were genuine “miracles” — events where this plane of existence was invaded by a power much higher and external to it.

Even those words are anathema to a Hellenist/Aristotelian. Fundamental to the Hellenist approach is to assume all things — the entire universe and anything which actually exists — is all one thing. It’s best explained as a single continuum. There might well be persons or beings above our level and our perception, but of necessity still rather like us. Maybe not physically, but not significantly different in all characteristics. Thus, we have the ancient Greek myths portraying the gods as suffering some of our human weaknesses.

For the Science Fiction writers and theorists to suggest something truly alien would be impossible to write. We have no frame of reference for something outside our frame of reference. Still, you’ll find the philosophical questions limited to creatures on this plane of existence. You’ll also see a rejection of the fundamental assumption behind all mysticism, which is this domain is inherently broken. They always insist it could be better, that there are no limits to what can be achieved within this plane of existence.

Even when people suggest other dimensions where time is a notional variable, where there can be a fifth, sixth, seventh, etc., dimension possible, it remains a part of this universe, this continuum. When theory proposes you can leave this dimension and step into another, somehow shortcutting space travel, and even time travel, it remains a concept wherein everything is connected in that Aristotelian continuum.

How would you imagine God standing outside of the space-time continuum, seeing all the universe from beginning to end as a single entity? That it remains to Him ultimately manipulable, and He can do anything He pleases, anywhere and anywhen He pleases, because there is a distinct end-point when it’s all finished and it won’t really matter? That He is more than able to account for what it means in terms of changes both forward and backward compatible, and we would never know the difference if He tested an endless number of permutations to amuse Himself. Actually, since He designed and built the whole thing, no “testing” in that sense is needed.

You see, I don’t have words for it, either. At least the Old Testament writers did have a commonly accepted body of symbolism, built into the very Hebrew language itself. Jesus called it “parables.” Yes, that means any discussion of ultimate reality is somehow other than objective, that it cannot be easily collected, analyzed and studied. It always varies with the context, including who is doing the speaking/writing, to whom, when and where and why. That’s the nature of mysticism, the underlying intellectual assumption it cannot be nailed down here on this plane because this plane is fundamentally broken and unreliable in itself. That consistent behavior of physical matter is actually an illusion, and you really can’t trust such things ultimately, but only provisionally.

Mysticism says the ultimate truth of things can only be revealed from outside this plane of existence. That is an epistemology, and it’s different, totally objectionable to Hellenist and Aristotelians. They demand control over the certainty of things, and reject anything outside that certainty under a series of labels meant to disparage it: subjectivism, superstition, etc. Sorry, but God said the only “certainty” which matters is your certainty in obeying the move of His Spirit, a spirit not constrained in any way by our universe. He said He was capable of giving to individuals all the certainty they needed to proceed, and damn what anyone else thinks. And if you are wrong, you’ll find out later, same as if you’re right. Or, perhaps we could say your certainty is the sense of peace you have, and no one on earth gets to measure or question it.

Yeah, Aristotelians hate that. Sorry folks; I can’t help you if this doesn’t make sense.