iyen ni wipe Oro ni ipile ohun gbogbo, abi? prof ride on.am intending to write on youth catechesis for matrimony in Familiaris Consortio 66

I am always confused by Theology as it could deal with a realm that is not based in reality. It may only exist in our heads. Would not a word have to refer to something that existed before the word came into being? This kind of begs the question of the chicken and the egg. Does the word create reality for it to exist within? Or does the object itself exist first and then something comes along and calls it something and thus the word is given?

theology is 'talking' about God and the relationship with man and the world around him. this talk is about a reality that exist. to zero it down to the question of chicken and the egg isnt a correct picture of what word is to reality. it is about talking about one without refering to the other. reality cannot be without a word to either describe it or point to it; word is by nature related to the reality it points to. if u ask me, reality preexists its description. what is already is a reality; it may take time to find its true or right word that best describes it.

Theology is that part of religion which requires brain...

"Religion contributes by 'purifying' reason, helping it not to fall prey to distortions, such as manipulation by ideology or partial application that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person"--Pope Benedict XVI

"Religion does not seek to manipulate non-believers, but to assist reason in the discovery of objective moral principles. Religion contributes by 'purifying' reason, helping it not to fall prey to distortions, such as manipulation by ideology or partial application that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person. At the same time, religion likewise recognizes its need for the corrective of reason in order to avoid excesses, such as fundamentalism or sectarianism."---Pope Benedict XVI

Re: CG, It was G K Chesterton replying to a critic. He said this may be in the context of reason and faith debate. Somebody may correct me if I am wrong.

I am a Hindu and I also have the same view that faith is a matter of personal one-to-one relationship with the divine. Therefore, I am of the opinion that theology or philosophy of religion should only be allowed to facilitate inter-religious or cross-cultural dialogue or at the most some "harmless speculative exercise". Keep them away from your personal faith.

Matters of faith are difficult to communicate. We still do not have a proper language of faith... (if we have one they will evolve a software and control God.) In the absence of its own language, humans have borrowed the ordinary language, used it for religious communication and in the process institutionalised faith. This institutionalized religion, at the best, is a kindergarten of spirituality or just a preliminary to your personal relationship with Christ.

Once again G K Chesterton, "When the churches are controlled by the theologians religious people stay away."

I agree with you. Individual moral behaviour has much of its source in our belief pattern and religious beliefs are one of the largest source of morality. In the social realm and speculative purposes, there is a need of theorisation and consequently reason is very important. But in a matter of faith one does not rely on theology. Rather theology may distract us from the one-to-one relationship with the divine.

Therefore, personally I always believe in separating my philosophical convictions from religious matters.

I have qouted Kierkegaard somewhere in Resesrchgate. For him, faith is a matter of believing in a paradox. He says, life is more than logic, so reason is not the only and surest way to reality.

“Reason is proud of having excluded the paradox, which it considers to be absurd, since it (the paradox) does not play the game by Reason’s rules.” (H V Hong & E H Hong, Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climucus, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985, p. 50)

In announcing their mutual incompatibility “Reason merely parrots the Paradox…” which replies to Reason, “It is just as you say, and the amazing thing is that you think it is an objection.” (p. 52) For Kierkegaard, the fact that Reason excludes Paradox only proves that it is exclusionary, not that what it excludes is by that fact discredited.

I liked your comments, may be because, when you said "we have a personal relationship with Him and can experience Him intimately as He journeys with us" you sounded Kierkegaardian.

'word' is a very complex concept. A word is a juncture where the abstract and concrete form of idea and thought and emotion are united together. Before the phonetic formation of the word, all the grammatical features are coded in the gene. All about the peculiarity of the human language is that we derive unlimited words and expressions from the limited, genetically coded symbols and grammatical features.

Being a linguist, I would like to discuss it in more a scientific way. Generally word is considered in Linguistics as mental lexicon. As all of us know that vocabulary or word is the central element of the entire component of the language. How words are made? This is a question generally everybody think of. A word is a very complex set up as I said above. When you read a word, you are silent and try to infer the meaning of the word in the context. If I did some grammatical mistake in my writing, your eye immediately catches the mistake. And you do all silently. But when you speak and utter a word, or you listen to somebody speaking a word, the story is different. You try to find a lot of other things which you dont find in the written script. Your perception catches them so quickly with out hesitation.

A word carries all your emitions attitudes and many other implications of your conversation when to talk to a person. Not only that, when you speak, your style of speaking and choice of words also indicate your individual and peculiar style and nature. So word is a very complex phenomenon.

As a linguist, what all we do is that what arammatical rules involved in word making in a particular language and the similarities and dissimilarities of the grammatical patterns with other languages.

In response to the original question, I highly recommend reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Ethics". I don't recall if there is one essay in particular that deals with this (try "Christ, Reality, and Good" and "Ultimate and Penultimate" for starters), but it pops up throughout.

I know that Karl Barth deals with this issue as well, but sadly, though it's been sitting on my shelf for months, I've yet to open his Church Dogmatics. Try Volume II, Chapter VI: The Reality of God, or Volume III: the Doctrine of Creation.

"Religion contributes by 'purifying' reason ..."

How does one purify reason?

Hi Oyedare,

I assume you know that the design/creation of the physical universe was over 6 days with 10 utterances.

in the recent complex creation I connect the 22 letters of the edenic (see edenics.org Mozeson) language to string theory.

best,