Just Curious

The Absolute Transcendence of God

After some thought I realize that the one insight that I've gained, namely, that the moral law, which transcends all circumstances, is readily understandable by all rational agents, could be turned into a rather conceited notion that truth is whatever we understood to be right and that our maxims (the principles we actually act on) necessarily coextend with the moral law (the principles that we ought to act on.)

I have mentioned earlier to my friends at Penn and in NEYM in separate letters that the mere fact of the existence of transcendental moral law does not itself imply that its contents could be readily comprehended by the human mind. Kant called this the outer boundaries of human reason, and some medieval English mystics called it the "cloud of unknowing." Any attempt to figure *all* the details out necessarily involves the smuggling in of empirical notions we as fallible human beings learned from the outside world...(see Marx's Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of the State...)

To a certain degree, the Quaker idea of inward Light, which parallels the above understanding, could also lead to all kinds of notions that because truth is readily available to me, by exercising my reason or by praying or through other fantastic exercises I could gain perfect understanding of it and act on it. If we leap one step further and start acting like we do know what the entire body of moral law entails, then such behavior clearly is a spectacular non sequitur. Knowledge of the existence of truth and knowledge of truth itself are clearly two different things. Affirmation of the former does not have any implication regarding the latter whatsoever.

The strange thing though, is that despite my knowledge of such danger, I have recently been acting as though not only I know that moral knowledge is a priori, but that I actually know what is right and what is wrong *for sure*, *all the time*. This might be an inkling that I am on my way of becoming a Ranter (in fact, this might be a good definition of Ranterism, the non sequitur I just mentioned.) This is rather dreadful.

For men like Karl Barth, the aforementioned non sequitur is the beginning of the divination of human thinking. Notions, however truthful they are, becomes our false god and idol and the still small voice of the living God is blocked. Perhaps instead of Origen, I should look at Barth's Commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans instead.

posted by James Chang @ 11:41 PM