[REBORN FROM THE ASHES][comment][01.04]

hugeseaUID：190158

关于REBORN FROM THE ASHES组COMMENTS活动的说明&汇总
https://bbs.gter.net/thread-1042733-1-2.html

读了几天比较简单的文章，今天我们读一读稍微难点的文章。该段文章
节选自Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius(c. 480–c.524)的
<The Consolation of Philosophy>一书的第五部分。

2008年harvard university press出版的由David R. Slavitt翻译的
<The Consolation of Philosophy>中评价说:"（The Consolation of Philosophy）
rich with metaphors of travel, of the home, of music, and of craft. Both, too,
are deeply allusive, bringing togetherliterary echoes and resonant rewritings.

The Consolation of Philosophy （节选）
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
Translated by David R. Slavitt

“As we have agreed, I think, things are known not according to their natures but according to the nature of the one who is comprehending them. Let us consider, then, insofar as we can, what the nature of divine substance must be so that we can have some inkling of the kind of knowledge the divine mind has. All who live by reason agree that God is eternal, and we must therefore think about what eternity means. This will clarify what the divine nature is and also what divine knowledge must be. Eternity is the whole, simultaneous, perfect possession of limitless life, which we can better understand perhaps by comparing it to temporal things. One who lives in time progresses in the present from the past and into the future. There is nothing in time that can embrace the entirety of his existence. He has no idea about tomorrow and has already lost his hold on the past. In this day-to-day life, he lives only in the transitory moment. Whatever is in time—even though, as Aristotle says, time had no beginning and has no ending and extends into infinity—is still not what may correctly be called ‘eternal.’ Its life may be infinitely long, but still it does not comprehend its entire extent simultaneously. It is still waiting for the future to reveal itself and it has let go of much of the past. What may properly be called eternal is quite different, in that it has knowledge of the whole of life, can see the future, and has lost nothing of the past. It is in an eternal present and has an understanding of the entire flow of time.

“Those philosophers are wrong, then, who took Plato’s dictum that the world had no beginning and had no end and inferred from that that the created world is co-eternal with the Creator. It is one thing to proceed through infinite time, as Plato posits, but quite another to embrace the whole of time in one simultaneous present. This is obviously a property of the mind of God. God should not be thought of as older than the created world but different in his grasp of time in the immediacy of his being. The endless and infinite changing of things in time is an attempt to imitate eternity, but it cannot equal its immobility and it fails to achieve the eternal present, producing only an infinite number of future and past moments. It never ceases to be and therefore is an imitation of eternity, but it is balanced on the knifeedge of the present, the brief and fleeting instant, which we may call a kind of costume of eternity. But since it is not equal to that eternal state, it falls from immobility to change, from the immediacy of a continuing present to the infinite extent of past and future moments, and it confers on whatever possesses it the appearance of what it imitates. And since it could not abide in permanence, it seized instead on the infinite flow of time, an endless succession of moments, and in that way could appear to have a continuity, which is not the same as permanence. All this is to say that if we use proper terms, then, following Plato, we should say that God is eternal but the world is perpetual.

“Now, since every judgment is able to comprehend things only according to the nature of the mind making that judgment, and since God has an eternal and omnipresent nature, his knowledge surpasses time’s movements and is made in the simplicity of a continual present, which embraces all the vistas of the future and the past, and he considers all this in the act of knowing as though all things were going on at once. This means that what you think of as his foreknowledge is really a knowledge of the instant, which is never-passing and never-coming-to-be. It is not pre-vision (praevidentia) but providence (providentia), because, from that high vantage point, he sees at once all things that were and are and are to come. You insist that those things of the future are inevitable if God can see them, but you must admit that not even men can make inevitable those things that they see. Your seeing them in the present does not confer any inevitability, does it?”

“No, not at all.”

“And if you accept the distinction between the human and the divine present, then it would follow that, just as you see things in the temporal present, he must see things in the eternal present. So his divine prescience does not change the nature of things, but he sees them in his present time just as they will come to be in what we think of as the future. And he cannot be confused but sees and understands immediately all things that will come to pass whether they are necessitated or not—just as you can see at the same time a man walking on the ground and the sun rising in the sky, and, although the two sights coincide, you understand immediately that the man’s walking is willed and the sun’s rising is necessitated. And it is similarly true that his observation does not affect the things he sees that are present to him but future in terms of the flow of time. And this means that his foresight is not opinion but knowledge based on truth and that he can know something is going to happen and at the same time be aware that it lacks necessity.

“Now, if you were to say that what God sees as going to occur cannot not occur and that what cannot not occur happens of necessity, and make a problem of the word ‘necessity,’ I will answer that it is absolutely true but is, indeed, a problem, not so much for logicians as for theologians. All I can tell you is that this future event from the point of view of divine knowledge is necessary, but from its own nature is utterly and entirely free. There are actually two necessities, one of them simple—as that all men are mortal—and the other conditional—as that when you see a man walking it is necessary that he be walking. Whatever you know cannot be otherwise than as you know it. But this conditional necessity is different from the simple kind in that it is not caused by the thing’s nature but by the addition of the condition. It is not necessary that a man go for a walk, even though it is necessary, when he is walking, that he is walking. It is in the same way that if divine providence sees anything in its eternal present, that must necessarily be, even though there is no necessity in its nature. God can see as present future events that happen as a result of free will. Thus, they are, from God’s point of view, necessary, although in themselves they do not lose the freedom that is in their nature. All those things, then, that God knows will come to be will, indeed, come to be, some of them proceeding from free will, so that when they come to be they will not have lost the freedom of their nature, according to which, until the time that they happened, they might not have happened. So why is it important that they are not necessary if, from the aspect of divine knowledge, it turns out that they are tantamount to being necessary? It is like the examples I proposed to you a moment ago of the rising sun and the walking man. While these things are happening, they cannot not be happening, but of the two, only one was bound to happen while the other was not. In the same way, the things God sees in his eternal present will certainly happen, but some will happen because of the necessity of things and others will happen because of those who are doing those actions. From the aspect of divine knowledge, then, they are necessary, but considered in themselves they are free from the compulsion of necessity. So are things that you look at with the senses singular, but if you look at them from the point of view of reason, they are universal.

“And now you may perhaps object that it lies in your power to change your intention and thereby to frustrate providence and turn it into nonsense, because whatever providence may have foreseen, you can do something else. And my answer is that you can decide to do something else, but the truth of providence will have seen that as well in its eternal present, and whatever you may try to do that is different or unpredictable will have been understood and predicted, whichever way you turn, so that you cannot avoid or evade divine foreknowledge, just as you cannot escape being seen by an eye that is focused on you, even though you decide to dart one way when you had been going in another direction. And what would you reply? That it is within your power to alter divine knowledge, since you were going to do this but abruptly changed your mind and chose instead to do that, and therefore divine knowledge must have changed just as quickly? It is not at all the case. Divine prescience runs ahead of everything and recollects it to the eternal present of its own knowledge. It does not change because it does not need to, having already foreseen the change you made at the last moment. God has this complete knowledge and understanding and vision of all things not from the unfolding of the events themselves but from the simplicity of his own perfect knowledge. It is in this light that we can answer the question you posed a while back about our providing a part of God’s knowledge. The power of his knowledge includes everything in an eternal present and does not at all rely on the unfolding of later events. In this way, man’s freedom is maintained in its integrity, and therefore God’s rewards and punishments are meted out fairly and appropriately, because free will is operating and men are not compelled by necessity. God has prescience and is a spectator from on high, and as he looks down in his eternal present, he assigns rewards to the good and punishments to the wicked. In this way, our hopes and our prayers are not at all in vain. Our prayers, if they are of the right kind and are pleasing to God, are not without effect. And the conclusion, then, is clear, that you must avoid wickedness and pursue the good. Lift up your mind in virtue and hope and, in humility, offer your prayers to the Lord. Do not be deceived. It is required of you that you do good and that you remember that you live in the constant sight of a judge who sees all things.”

hugeseaUID：190158

真快
沙发马上没了
先占上，读完来写comments
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To begin with，what is the meaning of eternity? The author said, "Eternity is the whole, simultaneous, perfect possession of limitless life".  For human being, time is a flow of the past, the present, and the future. But for the God, there is only the eternal present. In the meantime, for the God, there doesn't exist foreknowledge, in term of time, and the God, simultaneously, look down on what is happening in the world of time. In short，the God and all the attributes of God are eternal.

next, let us make clear the meaning of the words: perpetual. Consulting the dictionary, we know that  "A perpetual act, situation, or state is one that happens again and again and so seems never to end". The author said in his essay that "God is eternal but the world is perpetual". Why the world is not co-eternal with the Creator? This is because the world "falls from immobility to change, from the immediacy of a continuing present ( an eternal present) to the infinite extent of past and future moments" and "seizes instead on the infinite flow of time, an endless succession of moments".

The following I want to present  have been posted  in 12#, 14#.....

hugeseaUID：190158

果然 大海发了篇关于哲学的！！！
豆腐店的86 发表于 2010-1-4 16:22

呵呵，我有全本书哦，你要看不？

hugeseaUID：190158

COMMENT
This essay is so interesting that while reading, I felt the fluid of thoughts flooding into my mind. A sense of pre-destiny was aroused to some extend indeed, though, as an atheist I'd like t ...

His first contention concerned about the eternity of God. Comparing twokinds of everlasting states (one was when time flew as normal, whichmade us can know only a fraction of the time river; the other was whenthe time and universe merged into one integral object and the timeceased to flow but appeared as a whole), he proposed that the Godpresented in the latter way, that is, all time came at one time. Thisenables the divine to gain a perfect knowlege--to know every process,every detail, every past, every future and most important, everyconsequences. This contention serves as the basis for the next argument.
pluka 发表于 2010-1-4 17:31

Yes！This is, indeed, what the author wants to inform us.

For human being, time is a flow of the past, the present, and the future. But for the God, there is only the eternal present. "Eternity is the whole, simultaneous, perfect possession of limitless life". Therefore, for the God, there doesn't exist foreknowledge, in term of time, and the God, simultaneously, look down on what is happening in the world of time.

hugeseaUID：190158

COMMENT
This essay is so interesting that while reading, I felt the fluid of thoughts flooding into my mind. A sense of pre-destiny was aroused to some extend indeed, though, as an atheist I'd like t ...

This essay is very convincing and compelling when the reader believesin God, or even, as me, when he does not believe in. Yet inevitablycomes another question: if God serves only as witness, why we need him?For human, knowing the possible future does not tantamount to have thatfuture. There might be some relief, though, the real future awaits tobe created instead of listened. The author may persuade me of theomnipresence and omniscience of God, but he did not tell me why I should care it.
pluka 发表于 2010-1-4 17:31

if God serves only as witness, why we need him?

The author said in his article：God has prescience and is a spectator from on high, and as he looksdown in his eternal present, he assigns rewards to the good andpunishments to the wicked.　The God does not only serve as witness. The more important view of the authur is that the God ensures that the good rewarded and the evil punished. And this is the reason why you should care it according to the author's point of view.

hugeseaUID：190158

12# hugesea

Thx~
I hurried to class before so as to neglect sth, and yes, you've told it right. God then comes as a perfect judge, inspiring people to follow the virtue and goodness, right?

...

我自己都被绕晕了。就是说，因为上帝是没有流动的时间观念，因此他的“目睹”与他的“行动”是没有先后之分的。他看见自己做了，就做了；他自己做了，就看见了。但同时上帝能够看到人类的全部，也就是说他在一开始也能够看到自己的奖惩对人类的结果——即，上帝的奖惩在人类一出生、甚至是出生以前就已经布置好了。他其实不需要干啥事，乖乖看着就成——事实上，他自己也干不了啥别的事了，因为他想对人类干的都超不出时间范围，也就都超不出他之前预言过的范围，于是，上帝就被自己的预言能力困住了，他不能做自己没做过的事情。那么，既然这种奖惩已经固定，可否看做是自然的一体，看做是上帝也无能为力不能再干预（虽然是他一开始做的，但他做过之后就不能再做别的来更改了）的东西？ 上帝不能干预的话，要他来干嘛？

pluka 发表于 2010-1-4 20:37

I do not read such a fatalistic viewpoint, which i have marked in red, in the above article .

The author said that "All those things, then, that God knows will come to be will, indeed, come to be, some of them proceeding from free will, so that when they come to be they will not have lost the freedom of their nature, according to which, until the time that they happened, they might not have happened."  Read this carefully, you might realize that the author agree with such a point of view that humane being has his free will, and humane being can do "whatever he may try to do that is different or unpredictable"
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看来我还没回答你的最后的问题：上帝不能干预的话，要他来干嘛？ 回答这个问题我还是用中文吧，还是中文方便顺手。
首先我们来看作者的结论：And the conclusion, then, is clear, that you must avoid wickedness and pursue the good. Lift up your mind in virtue and hope and, in humility, offer your prayers to the Lord. Do not be deceived. It is required of you that you do good and that you remember that you live in the constant sight of a judge who sees all things.

所以作者这边文章的目的在于劝人向善。他给的原因是上帝是永恒的，对上帝来说，不存在一种时间上在先的知晓，上帝在永恒的现在中俯瞰时间世界中发生的一切。上帝观察事物时，并不改变事物的过程。我们“live in the constant sight of a judge", 我们所做的一切都会被上帝simultaneously 知晓。因此，“In this way, man’s freedom is maintained in its integrity, and therefore God’s rewards and punishments are meted out fairly and appropriately".

对于你的这个问题--“上帝不能干预的话，要他来干嘛？”以及就你的interpretation来说, 从这篇文章里面是找不到任何答案的，因为作者论述上帝的永恒以及上帝对时间世界中发生的一切的witness，只不过是为了说明我们“live in the constant sight of a judge who sees all things”。

hugeseaUID：190158

Sentence and Phrases
【Comparison】
Eternity is the whole, simultaneous, perfect possession of limitless life, which we can better understand perhaps by comparing it to temporal things.
【Compariso ...

I have fever today and I’d got to sleep.
海王泪 发表于 2010-1-5 00:28

bless! 一顶不会是Swine flu的

hugeseaUID：190158

have some inkling of 对···略有所知
simultaneous 同时的, 同时发生的
entirety
n. 全部; 完全
transitory
adj. 短暂的; 无常的; 瞬息的
let go of  释放,放开
in that 因为
have nothing of 不理睬
d ...

10And it is similarly true that his observation does not affect thethings he sees that are present to him but future in terms of the flowof time.没搞懂
11 It is in this light that we can answer the question you posed a while back about our providing a part of God’s knowledge. 这句有点难.
tequilawine 发表于 2010-1-5 10:26

10And it is similarly true that his observation does not affect thethings he sees that are present to him but future in terms of the flowof time.没搞懂

这句的意思大概是这样的：上帝只观察并不影响事情（经过结果）。就时间序列来说，这些事情发生在将来；但对于上帝来说，这些事情是发生在当前的。
11 It is in this light that we can answer the question you posed a while back about our providing a part of God’s knowledge. 这句有点难.

这句里面 a while back 是“前阵子”的意思，我查词典
从这个角度，我们可以回答你前阵子提出的问题：我们为上帝提供了一部分智慧。（其实作者对这个问题的答案是否定的，因为作者在文章说上帝的观察
并没有因为我们free will的选择的改变而改变，因为上帝对我们的观察根本就不需要改变，即使我们作出了different and unpredictable的改变，上帝也
是会在改变发生前的最后一刻预见到。也正因为如此，我们并不能为上帝提供一部分智慧。）