If we are to rely totally on our own perception, observations and reasoning we naturally argue, "Faith is the power of the imagination, which makes the real unreal, and the unreal real: in direct contradiction with the truth of the senses, with the truth of reason. Faith denies what objective reason affirms, and affirms what it denies."

To marry the logic of Science to an expression of Christian dogma will bare only contradiction to the point of abstraction. 'Materialism', in its purely classical sense, will attack dogmatically the triune tenet, and in complete antithesis within its own form state, " the truth of polytheism is again affirmed, and the truth of monotheism is denied. To require the reality of the persons is to require the unreality of the unity, and conversely, to require the reality of the unity is to require the unreality of the persons. Thus in the holy mystery of the Trinity – that is to say, so far as it is supposed to represent a truth distinct from human nature – all resolves itself into delusions, phantasms, contradictions, and sophisms."

In comprehending Karl Barth's labeling of the rejection of “orthodoxy” as “barbaric,” uneducated, and disrespectful, his defence of the Council of Chalcedon’s articulation of “hypostatic union” is apt. His dismissal of the modern weariness of such articulations as “plebeian”, and the result of a “barbaric intellectuality”, are of continued and succinct relevance.

oh, for heaven's sake. religious dogma as analogous to mathematics? mathematicians, both pure and applied, understand they are dealing with ideal objects. what on earth does that have to do with the crass concretisation of religious belief?

if you want to talk about god as some kind of idealisation, fine. but i don't see what that has to do with the archaic bigotry of australia's religious spokesmen.

"Faith is ... in direct contradiction with the truth of ... reason. Faith denies what objective reason affirms, and affirms what it denies."
This is a quote from ‘Essence of Christianity’ by Ludwig Feuerbach, the famous 19th century critic of religion, (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/essence/ec25.htm), hardly somebody with 21st century insights from science (or mathematics or logic for that matter). In particular, he could not have had the insights from complementarity theory suggesting that his famous “man created God in his own image“ is a complementary rather than opposing statement to “God created man in His own image“.

“To marry the logic of Science to an expression of Christian dogma...”
There is no such thing as ‘logic of Science‘ only one logic, formalised into mathematical logic (unless one uses the popularised understanding of logic as common sense), that structures not only any rational thinking but also the working of computers. There is, however, a methodology of science and nobody wants to ‘marry‘ it to any workable methodology of religion or theology. Some people see analogies between these two approaches, (c.f. Ian Barbour‘s ground breaking ‘Myths, Models and Paradigms; The Nature of Scientific and Religious Language, SCM 1974), some disagree (c.f. Hans Kung‘s ‘The Beginning of All Things: Science and Religion‘, Eerdmans 2007). The emphasis is again on analogy that, at most, can be carried only that far. I certainly did not want to carry too far my analogy between (some) ‘givens’ of dogmatic theology and (some) axioms of a mathematical theory.

Perhaps Paul Tillich’s words about phenomenological description can be applied also to analogy (including my own), namely, that it “can be seen by anyone who is willing to look in the same direction, that (it) illuminates other related ideas, and that it makes the reality which these ideas are supposed to reflect (more) understandable.“

bushbasher,
Some people understand when they are told “to imagine the size of Jupiter, think of Earth as a pea, then Jupiter would be the size of an orange”, Some don’t, and exclaim “what on earth does Jupiter have to do with oranges?”

George

You are a gentleman and a scholar! Faith and toleration are evident in every word you have written here.

It is no small thing you have said, that the givens of Theology involve 'personal existential questions' so that Theology becomes emotive in a way that Mathematics does not. Indeed mathematics is nothing more than the manipulation of symbols and patterns conrolled by the rules of algebra. People are, of course, not symbols and are not entirely rational. In fact we reveal our true selves most clearly in the honest expression of emotions, not reason.

If theology begins with 'personal existential questions' and seeks to give words to the inexpressible then perhaps its logic is closer to the logic of poetry or music than to mathematics. Perhaps counterpoint, dissonance and resolution are the structures of theology rather than axioms and syllogisms. At my funeral I think Id rather hear Faure's Requiem than the First 20 theorems of Euclid Book I. If theology is like music then our differences reflect the great beauty and diversity of Creation rather than mere contradictions that must be explained and eliminated.

Yes, it's just another analogy with its own flaws and limitations because theology is not mathematics or science or narrative or poetry or music

george i'm happy with metaphors and models, as long as they are illustrative. i have no problem with god as some abstract notion of the ideal (though i question what theorem you might derive). but, once again: what does dogma have to do with any of this?

what do i see of religious traditionalists? self-righteous fools telling justice kirby that god's not happy with him. and why? because some other self-righteous fools wrote down the same bigotry a couple thousand years ago. THAT'S what religious dogma is. it has none of the flexibility or humility, OR truth, OR beauty or poetry of mathematical discovery.

waterboy,
Thank you for the compliment, but I am just an old man trying to see the world from many perspectives. I agree with almost all that you wrote, since it does not contradict what I said. I am not so sure whether “mathematics is nothing more than the manipulation of symbols and patterns“ but certainly its justification is in its “unreasonable effectiveness” mentioned above, and you are write that in case of theology, its justification can be seen (among other things) in its relevance to 'personal existential questions'. These are two very different justifications, and no analogy can bridge them.

I too prefer music, or some other artistic expression, to a dry axiomatic/dogmatic system, when wanting to “experience” religion, the same as when embracing my wife I do not want to “experience” her skeleton though I realise that without a backbone she could not exist.

bushbasher,
I can see, you have a problem with religion, and I am sorry I cannot help you with that. I do not understand, for instance, Turkish, but I do not have a problem with that, i.e. I do not feel the urge to enter into discussions about, say, the Turkish grammar.

Only you and nobody but you can tell whether you are unable or unwilling to admit the possibility that the “finger“ you are looking at (as dirty as some parts of it might be) is not all that there is, that it might be pointing to a “moon” beyond our direct reach. Sorry for another analogy, or rather metaphor.