Context Sensitivity and God

Here are some super quick and fairly superficial thoughts on the stuff we have been discussing and its relationship to the philosophy of religion.

 Being temporal, finite, and changeable creatures seems to entail being context sensitive beings and needing languages to be or have context-sensitive elements. Hence, CS expressions is a consequence of the kind of being we are. 

 God is none of the above. Hence, God is not a CS being. Hence, God’s language is not CS. So, one way to express the creature/Creator distinction is at the level of language in general and at the level of CS expressions and thought in particular. And one way to express the incarnation is to see it a merger between a context-insensitive being and a CS being or a merger between context insensitive expressions and thought and CS expressions and thought. 

 By creating or in virtue of creating, God brings into existence something that radically unlike Him in pretty much every respect. One way I like to think of this is in terms of a contraction of being. The creation is necessarily a contraction of or a radical limitation of all that God is. Putting the point a bit metaphorically or poetically, the infinite, eternal, and immutable contains, in some way, the finite, temporal, and changeable, while the finite, temporal, and changeable does not contain the infinite, eternal, and immutable. The creation is, literally, an image of the creator and not the other way around. Just as a reflection is a 2D representation of a 3D reality—the 3D reality contains, in a sense, the 2D reality—the creation is a reflection of the creator. So, CS expressions and thought reflect or represent a context-insensitive reality. Both are real, but the latter is more fundamental than the former. 

 Caveat: I think the above is true as far as it goes, but it is quite interesting to consider a substantial qualification. As I mentioned in class, one simple way to think of one of the differences between the members of the Trinity is in terms of CS thoughts and expressions. Each member of the Trinity has a first-person perspective (let’s assume). So, the Father can truthfully think—eternally, infinitely, immutably—'I am the Father’, while the Son cannot think such a thought. The Son has the thought ‘You are the Father.’ Both thoughts have the same content but a different character. Furthermore, both thoughts necessarily have the same content—there is no context in which such a thought by the members of the Trinity has a different content. So, divine thoughts—thoughts by each person of the trinity—have different characters but necessarily the same content. So, they have features of context sensitivity and features of context insensitivity. In God, CS and CI are unified and are still diverse in the same way that God is a unity of diversity, a plurality of oneness. Neither is more fundamental than the other. These are equally ultimate realities. 

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